Polio in Pakistan: what World Polio Day changed, and what the November campaign will do

The day itself

World Polio Day fell on Saturday, 24 October 2026. Rotary International's global message for the day was "One Day. One Focus: Ending Polio". In Pakistan, the Pakistan Polio Eradication Initiative marked the day with its own theme, "Shukriya Polio Frontline Workers", honouring more than 400,000 frontline workers across the country; more than 60 percent of the country's polio frontline workforce are women, Dawn reported.

The tribute matters because the work is unfinished. Pakistan has cut polio cases from an estimated 20,000 in the early 1990s to 31 in 2025 — and seven so far in 2026.

The November campaign

Pakistan's third sub-national polio campaign of 2026 is scheduled for 2–8 November, across 97 districts, aiming to vaccinate more than 23.9 million children under five. Frontline workers will visit households and give every eligible child the vaccine drops.

If a team knocks on your door during that week, that is the campaign. If you live outside the selected districts, your child's protection comes from the routine immunisation schedule — the campaign does not replace it.

Why this week stung: the Karachi case

On 19 October, the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) confirmed Pakistan's seventh polio case of 2026: a six-month-old boy from Union Council Jamali Colony in Karachi East, confirmed by the Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health in Islamabad.

Five of this year's seven cases are from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and two from Sindh. Karachi's last reported case before this one was in December 2024 — nearly two years earlier. The programme says a detailed investigation is underway, and that targeted vaccination and stronger routine immunisation are being assessed as the response.

Polio has no cure. It mainly affects children under five, and about one in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis. That is why a single case in a big city is treated as an alarm, not a statistic. Pakistan and Afghanistan remain the only two countries where wild poliovirus is still endemic.

Forward 1: "The drops cause infertility"

This is one of the oldest forwards in circulation, and it has a laboratory answer. Pakistan's Expanded Programme on Immunisation sent oral polio vaccine samples to the National Control Laboratory for Biologicals, an independent laboratory, to test whether they contained human hormones that could cause infertility later in life.

The result, reported in The Express Tribune in January 2015: the vaccine does not carry any material that could harm fertility, and none of the six hormones tested could be detected even at a concentration as low as 0.0005 mg in the two-drop dose. The concern had been projected since 2004, and it had become a major reason for refusals in parts of the former FATA and some parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh. The lab test was done to clear exactly that misconception.

The World Health Organization describes the oral polio vaccine as safe and effective. A May 2026 Minute Mirror analysis, citing WHO, puts the number of children immunised with the oral polio vaccine at more than 2.5 billion worldwide. As with any medical product, extremely rare side effects are recorded — WHO puts vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis at about one in 2.7 million doses — which is very different from the forward's claim that the drops are designed to cause infertility.

Forward 2: "The vaccine is haram"

The religious answer is on the record, twice over. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation's International Islamic Fiqh Academy issued a declaration on the obligatory nature of polio vaccination, stating that the vaccines used are safe from any pork products, that trustworthy experts have ascertained they contain no agents that may cause infertility in girls later, and that vaccination is a Shariah-commanded duty — a trust placed in the hands of guardians, whose neglect makes them accountable.

Pakistani religious leadership has affirmed the same position, including Maulana Sami ul Haq of Darul Uloom Haqqania, and it has been affirmed by the Islamabad Declaration of an international ulama conference in June 2014, by Pakistan's Council of Islamic Ideology, and by the Islamic Advisory Group convened under the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

Why the forwards still work

A May 2026 analysis in Minute Mirror put it plainly: disinformation spread through Facebook, WhatsApp and TikTok has had a profound impact on parents' attitudes, resulting in vaccine hesitancy and missed immunisation opportunities. A forwarded message can be reshared thousands of times within hours — far faster than any correction.

That speed is the reason this article exists on World Polio Day, and the reason the short video carries the same two answers: the lab test and the fatwa. Neither answer is new. Both are documented. The forwards survive because they travel faster than the documents do.

What to do in campaign week

• ✓If you are in one of the 97 districts, expect a visit between 2 and 8 November, and keep your child's vaccination record ready. - If a team misses your house, the programme lists a toll-free helpline, 1166, for support and for reporting missed teams. - Routine immunisation continues alongside campaigns; a campaign dose does not cancel the routine schedule.

Sources

• Dawn, 24 October 2026
• The Express Tribune, 20 October 2026
• The Express Tribune, 19 October 2026
• Geo News, October 2026
• Business Recorder, October 2026
• The Express Tribune, 13 January 2015
• International Islamic Fiqh Academy declaration (polioeradication.org archive)
• End Polio Pakistan programme page
• Minute Mirror, 28 May 2026
• WHO poliomyelitis fact sheet
• WHO Regional Office for Africa, World Polio Day 2026 message