Poliovirus Detected in Karachi’s Gadap Area: First Case in 2023

Dr. Shahzad Baig, who oversees the polio program, announced that an environmental sample gathered from the Gadap area in Karachi last month has returned a positive test.

The polio virus was discovered in samples procured from the Sohrab Goth region in Gadap Town UC-4 on May 15 of this year.

Dr. Baig acknowledged the success in confining the disease to the southern districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but revealed that this is the inaugural case reported in Karachi for the current year. He elaborated that previous positive samples were identified in Lahore, Hangu, Peshawar, DI Khan, and upper South Waziristan.

The National Institute of Health’s Pakistan Polio Laboratory confirmed last week that two environmental samples from the Peshawar district in KP province were positive for the wild poliovirus.

The lab identified the wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) in sewage samples taken from the Naray Khuwar and Larama collection sites on May 9 and May 16, respectively.

The lab further noted that the detected viruses are genetically linked to the viral cluster circulating in the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, the neighboring region.

The global eradication of polio is nearly achieved. Nonetheless, the complete extermination of the disease has been obstructed in Afghanistan and some regions of adjacent Pakistan due to issues such as inaccessible locations, large-scale displacement, and suspicions of external interventions impacting the eradication attempts.