The World Health Organization has recently announced that from August 21 to September 1, three new cases of polio have been reported in the provinces of Kandahar and Helmand.
In a report published, it stated that since the beginning of this year, 22 cases of polio have been reported in Afghanistan.
The report, released on Monday (October 1), noted that three new cases of polio in Afghanistan were reported from the districts of Maiwand and Ghorak in Kandahar and the district of Nahr-e-Siraj in Helmand.
According to the report, since the beginning of the year, 24 cases of polio have also been reported in Balochistan, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Islamabad in Pakistan.
This comes as only six cases of polio were reported in Afghanistan and six in Pakistan last year.
It is worth mentioning that Afghanistan and Pakistan have yet to eradicate polio. Despite this ongoing challenge, the interim government recently suspended the polio vaccination campaign in Afghanistan.
Polio is a contagious virus that primarily affects children under five years old, but it is said that any unvaccinated individual can also be at risk of contracting it.
