PESHAWAR: Pakistan reported its 43rd poliovirus case of the year on Wednesday with the latest infection reported from the southwestern Balochistan province, the country’s national polio program confirmed, as Islamabad struggles to contain an alarming surge of the disease. 

The latest case was reported from the southwestern Chagai district in Balochistan, where a child contracted the disease. 

This makes it the first poliovirus case reported from the Chagai district this year and Balochistan’s 23rd. The development takes place as Pakistan launched a nationwide campaign on Monday to vaccinate over 45 million children against polio.

“On Wednesday, 30 October 2024, the lab confirmed detection of Type-1 Wild Poliovirus in a child from Chagai District of Balochistan,” Pakistan’s polio eradication program said in a statement. 

Giving a breakdown of the cases, the program said Pakistan has reported 23 polio cases from Balochistan, 12 from the southern Sindh province, six from the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and one each from Punjab and Islamabad this year.

Polio has caused a headache for Islamabad as Pakistan remains one of only two countries worldwide where the disease is endemic.

Its efforts to eliminate the disease have been hit hard by frequent militant attacks targeting vaccination teams. Religiously motivated militants, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, accuse polio vaccination teams of using inoculation campaigns to sterilize Pakistani children based on a Western conspiracy. 

The masses’ doubts regarding polio campaigns were exacerbated in 2011 when the US Central Intelligence Agency set up a fake vaccination program to gather intelligence on former Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

Two police officers were killed and three militants gunned down in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday after armed men attacked a polio vaccination team during an inoculation drive. 

This followed a September attack in which two people were killed when gunmen attacked a polio vaccination team in the northwestern Bajaur tribal district.

ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi on Wednesday vowed the government would identify expatriates who had “attacked” former chief justice Qazi Faez Isa’s car in London, threatening to register cases against them and cancel their Pakistani passports and identity cards. 

Isa, who retired as Pakistan’s top judge last week after what is widely considered to be a controversial stint in office, arrived in London on Tuesday night to attend an event at Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers.

Former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party had organized a protest outside the event venue ahead of the former judge’s arrival. The PTI accuses Isa of being aligned with the coalition government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, alleging that it had tried to provide an extension in office to him through a controversial constitutional amendment that was passed earlier this month. The government rejects these allegations. 

Video footage widely circulated online on Tuesday evening showed angry Khan supporters running after Isa’s car in London, with a few of them hitting the vehicle with their hands before it sped away. 

Pakistan’s high commissioner to the UK, Dr. Mohammad Faisal, condemned the attack.

“It is condemnable, we will take action,” he told reporters in London. 

State-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) said Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi had “strongly condemned” the attack on Isa, who was traveling in a Pakistani High Commission vehicle in London.

Naqvi urged Pakistan’s National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) to identify the suspects through available footage and vowed that cases would be registered against them in Pakistan. 

“Naqvi stated that the attackers’ ID cards and passports will be blocked,” APP said. “Immediate action would be taken to revoke their citizenship.”

Naqvi said the ministry would seek the federal cabinet’s approval in revoking the alleged attackers’ citizenships. 

“He also questioned why security was not provided to Qazi Faez Isa despite the fact that he was receiving threats,” APP said. 

It was under Isa’s tenure as chief justice that Pakistan’s top court denied Khan’s PTI its iconic bat symbol ahead of Feb. 8 general elections, saying the party had failed to hold intra-party elections. The verdict meant all PTI candidates had to contest elections as independents, which angered Khan supporters, who accused Isa of being biased in favor of the Sharif government. 

Khan, arguably Pakistan’s most popular, was ousted from office after a parliamentary no-trust vote in April 2022 and has since waged an unprecedented campaign of defiance against the country’s powerful military, government and what his party considers pro-establishment judges. 

Khan has been in prison since August 2023 after being convicted on several charges ranging from corruption to treason that he says are politically motivated.