40 Million Children to Be Vaccinated in Upcoming Nationwide Campaign

Pakistan announced a nationwide polio vaccination campaign targeting 40 million children under five.

What forty million means operationally

A national immunisation day is one of the largest coordinated operations any country conducts. Reaching every child under five within a few days requires:

• Hundreds of thousands of frontline workers, recruited and trained before each round.
• Microplans for every union council — mapping each settlement, the number of children in it, which team covers it and how long that will take.
• A cold chain that holds from national vaccine stores to a cool box in a village in summer heat. Vaccine outside its cold chain may be no vaccine at all.
• Fixed vaccination sites and around 500 permanent transit points on borders, highways, bus terminals and railway stations for children who are travelling.
• Security coordination in high-risk districts, planned against the same maps the teams use.
• Independent post-campaign monitoring afterwards.

Pakistan's target population has grown over time; more recent national rounds target around 45 million children.

Announcing in advance

Pre-announcing campaign dates is deliberate. Families who know a team is coming are more likely to keep children at home, which directly reduces the "not available" category — the dominant reason children are missed in dense urban areas, ahead of refusal.

Advance notice is delivered through mass media, mobile networks, mosque announcements and community mobilisers, in Urdu and regional languages.

How the round is judged

Not by children vaccinated, but by children missed — how many, where, and why. Independent monitors check finger marks in sampled households after the round, because administrative coverage is self-reported and has consistently proved the least reliable indicator in eradication programmes worldwide.

A round can report very high national coverage and still have failed, if the missed children are concentrated in the union councils where poliovirus is circulating.

For parents

Keep children under five at home on campaign days if you can. If a child was away, take them to a fixed vaccination point rather than waiting for the next round. Two drops every time, including for children vaccinated last month. Call 1166 if no team reaches your street.

Related: nationwide campaign · earlier national round · polio FAQs