ISLAMABAD: Health officials said the country was set to break its record for the highest number of polio cases in a year as seven more cases were confirmed on Thursday, raising the tally to 194.

“If it [number of cases] reaches 200, we will cross our own record of 199 in year 2000,” said Rana Mohammad Safdar, a senior official at the Pakistan National Institute of Health.

A World Health Organi­sation official in Islamabad said the figure was likely to cross 200 by year-end.

Pakistan is one of only three countries in the world where polio remains endemic but efforts to stamp it out have been badly hit in recent years by attacks on immunisation teams.

Mr Safdar, who heads the Expanded Programme on Immunisation, said that at least 130 of the cases reported were from northwestern tribal areas that border Afghanistan and house sanctuaries for militants.

The militants allege polio vaccination is a cover for espionage or Western conspiracy to sterilise Muslims.

The WHO official said the Pakistani strain of the virus had allegedly spread to neighbouring Afghan provinces. Afghanistan has recorded a total of seven cases this year.

Polio cases reached a low of 28 in 2005 but rose to 198 in 2011. In 2012, Pakistan had 58 cases while 72 were recorded in 2013.

Officials said tens of thousands of children were missing a polio eradication campaign every year “because of the law and order situation” in tribal areas as well as family and parents unwilling or afraid to vaccinate.

As the country moves into its post-monsoon period, officials fear the final figure could rise as high as 250.

Ikram Junaidi adds from Islamabad: Seven more polio cases were confirmed by Polio Virology Laboratory at the National Institute of Health, raising the number of cases reported this year to 194.

An official of the ministry of national health services requesting anonymity said three cases each were reported from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). The seventh patient belongs to Sindh.

The children affected by the virus are: four-month-old Zubair, son of Zafar. The baby could not be vaccinated. He and another patient from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa belong to Peshawar. The third one lives in Mardan.

Two of the three children of Fata affected by polio virus belong to Khyber Agency and one to North Waziristan.

The seventh case was reported from Gadap Town in Karachi, the official said.

Another official of the ministry said that security environment in the country was not good, yet the government had been trying to eradicate the virus.

“Nowhere in the world 64 polio team members and police officials guarding them have been killed and as many as 47 have suffered serious injuries. These incidents have occurred in Fata, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Karachi,” he said.

Published in Dawn, October 3rd, 2014