Pakistan’s week-long polio drive vaccinated more than 23.8 million children under five in its first six days, the National Emergency Operations Centre said on Sunday, closing on a target of about 24 million across 97 districts. The same week, it also lost two police officers to gunmen and saw four more abducted. The drive ran from 2 to 8 November, with more than 200,000 frontline workers going door to door, and the seventh day was spent chasing the children the first six days missed.
The scorecard, province by province
Punjab led with more than 9.126 million children in 13 districts, against a target of 9.278 million, about 98 percent. Sindh followed with more than 7.019 million in 20 districts, passing its target of 6.883 million. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reached more than 4.673 million in 27 districts, against a target of 4.808 million, about 97 percent, the shortest share. Balochistan reached more than 2.212 million in 31 districts, against a target of 2.217 million, all but complete. Islamabad added more than 450,000, just over its target of 447,614, while Gilgit-Baltistan covered more than 161,000 and Azad Jammu and Kashmir about 192,000. Added together, the figures land just past 23.8 million, matching the NEOC’s tally. The percentages are PakMirror’s own arithmetic.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan together hold 58 of the 97 districts, about 60 percent of the map, but only about 6.9 million of the children reached, under a third of the total. The campaign is dense in Punjab and Sindh, where the children are, and wide in the two western provinces, where districts are many and people are scattered. Teams also worked bus terminals and railway stations to catch travelling families.
The week’s other ledger
The coverage figure sits next to a second count. On Monday 2 November, four police officers protecting polio workers were abducted in Tank, and they had not been found when the drive ended. A day later, gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on a police car in the province, and two police officers guarding polio workers were shot dead in Mohmand, with a third officer injured. No polio staff were in the vehicle, a police official told AFP, and no group claimed it. President Asif Ali Zardari called the shooting extremely regrettable and condemnable.
In September, gunmen killed two police constables guarding a polio team in Balochistan. In Rawalpindi this week, police registered cases against two parents who turned vaccination teams away, The Express Tribune reported. Armed groups, among them the Pakistan Taliban, have attacked polio teams for years on the false claim that the drops are a Western plot, Al Jazeera noted. The campaign can reach almost every child it sets out to find; the attacks show why the last few percent are the hardest to hold.
Two cases while the drive ran
The drive also ran against a rising case count. Pakistan had seven polio cases this year when the campaign was announced on 19 October. The eighth, a 13-month-old girl from Bara tehsil in Khyber district, was confirmed on 1 November, the day before the drive began. Pakistan’s ninth polio case of 2026, a seven-month-old boy from Khyber district, was confirmed on Thursday 5 November by the Regional Reference Laboratory in Islamabad. Seven of the nine cases are in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and two in Sindh.
The numbers are still far below the past: 31 cases in 2025, 74 in 2024, and an estimated 20,000 a year in the early 1990s, a fall of about 99.8 percent. But two cases in one week show the virus is still finding unvaccinated children, and both came from the province where the drive fell shortest of its target.
A one-week deadline, and a June 2027 test
On Thursday 5 November, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered a comprehensive and coordinated polio strategy, drawn up with all four provinces, within a week. Federal health officials were told to visit every province and meet the chief ministers and chief secretaries. The meeting was also told that the virus still crosses from Afghanistan, that Punjab has reported no new case since February 2025, and that Balochistan has reported none in 2025 or 2026. Health Minister Mustafa Kamal has set June 2027 as the target for a polio-free Pakistan.
The November drive was the fifth major campaign of 2026 and the third sub-national one; September’s round protected more than 29.3 million children because it covered more ground. The test now is narrow: whether the plan lands by about 12 November, whether the four abducted officers are found, whether the final seven-day tally crosses 24 million, and whether the next round finds fewer missed children than this one did. Parents who missed a visit can call the polio helpline on 1166 or message 0346-7776546 on WhatsApp. More national news from Pakistan
