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A health worker administers polio vaccine drops to a child during a door-to-door vaccination campaign, in Karachi, Pakistan, 03 June 2024. A 2.5-year-old child from Shikarpur district, Sindh, has been paralyzed by wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1), marking the fourth case in Pakistan in 2024, the Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health in Islamabad notified. The virus is genetically linked to a cluster that disappeared from Pakistan in mid-2021 but was reintroduced through cross-border transmission from Afghanistan. According to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minister for Health Qasim Ali Shah, a week-long anti-polio campaign was launched on 03 June, to vaccinate in nine districts of the province including the provincial capital, to administer polio drops to 3.5 million children aiming to eliminate the disease from the country. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two nations where poliovirus is still endemic. (Photo by Shahzaib Akber/EPA/EFE)
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