ISLAMABAD: One more child has been crippled by the Wild Poliovirus 1 in Karachi, taking the tally to four polio cases in Pakistan this year, officials in the federal Health Ministry and National Institute of Health (NIH) Islamabad said on Friday.
“A 24-month-old child has been paralysed by the Wild Poliovirus in UC Gujro, Gadap Town in District East Karachi. Sequencing of the virus is underway but most probably the virus is genetically linked to virus circulating in Afghanistan,” an official in the federal health ministry told The News.
Officials in the Pakistan Polio Eradication Programme, however, said they were awaiting genetic sequencing of the virus to formally declare the fourth polio case.
But officials in the Ministry of National Health Services as well as NIH confirmed that not only the child in Karachi’s UC Gujro had been paralysed by polio but an environmental sample in Rawalpindi had also been tested positive for the poliovirus.
Similarly, around 48 environmental samples had so far been tested positive for the Wild Poliovirus 1, the official said adding that poliovirus was now being detected in multiple cities in all the four provinces of the country.
