Sewage samples taken from the Lasbela region contained Type-1 Wild Poliovirus (WPV1), according to sources inside the Health Ministry.
“The virus’s genome sequencing revealed that it belonged to Gadap Karachi and was discovered in samples taken from Lasbela and Hub.
The Ministry of Health verified last month that environmental samples from nine different areas around the nation contained poliovirus.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Health stated that samples from Quetta, Mastung, Multan, Peshawar, Nowshera, and Hub all had one instance of the virus.
The Poliovirus was also found in samples from Karachi Malir, Karachi South and Dera Ismail Khan.
It is pertinent to mention here that Pakistan reported its sixth polio case of 2023 after a nine-month-old child in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Orakzai district became the latest victim of the crippling disease in December last year.
The Ministry of Health confirmed that the polio virus was found in a 9-month-old child in Orakzai district.
Polio, a highly infectious and incurable disease, mainly affects children under the age of five. The virus invades the nervous system and can cause paralysis or even death in some cases.
