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| Photo File (AI/Sora) |
Pakistan’s final nationwide anti-polio campaign of 2025 failed to achieve its complete vaccination target, leaving hundreds of thousands of children without polio drops, according to official sources familiar with the matter.
The last national campaign of the year was conducted from December 15 to December 21 and managed to reach 98.6 per cent of its intended target. Despite the high coverage, nearly 900,000 children remained unvaccinated, marking another setback in Pakistan’s fight against polio.
Sources said that a total of 872,776 children were missed during the December campaign. Among them, 669,326 children were unavailable at the time of vaccination, while security concerns and vaccination boycotts prevented 148,774 children from receiving polio drops. Additionally, 54,676 parents refused vaccination for their children.
Provincial data shows that Punjab recorded the highest number of missed children at around 331,000, followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with approximately 250,000 unvaccinated children. In Sindh, 238,982 children missed vaccination, while Balochistan reported 43,339 missed cases.
In the federal capital Islamabad, around 6,000 children were not vaccinated, while 3,026 children in Gilgit-Baltistan and 1,272 children in Azad Kashmir missed out on polio drops. Sindh reported 32,947 cases of parental refusal, while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recorded 21,085 refusal cases.
Sources further revealed that vaccination coverage remained below 95 per cent in eight districts, whereas 111 districts recorded coverage between 95 and 100 per cent. No national or sub-national polio campaign conducted during 2025 succeeded in achieving full coverage.
Earlier reports had also highlighted shortcomings in the October nationwide anti-polio drive, held from October 13 to 19, which aimed to vaccinate more than 45 million children. During that campaign, 1,096,525 children missed vaccination, including 721,296 who were unavailable and 53,621 cases of vaccine refusal.
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