“We climb mountains and walk through the snow for hours with great difficulty. There is also a risk of snow falling on us from the mountains. Yet we do not give up. We reach our assigned area to vaccinate all children and protect them from polio,” says Rabia, a polio worker from Upper Chitral, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Rabia is one of the 400,000 polio frontline workers trained and mobilized by the World Health Organization (WHO), in partnership with Pakistan’s Polio Eradication Initiative, who went door-to-door during the first national polio vaccination campaign of 2026 (2–8 February). Their goal: to bring the life-saving polio vaccine to 45 million children.

Over the past 3 decades, thanks to hundreds of thousands of polio workers and the unwavering commitment of the Government of Pakistan and partners, Pakistan has reduced polio cases by 99.8% – from an estimated 20,000 in the early 1990s to 31 cases in 2025. Experts agree: ending wild polio in Pakistan and worldwide is within reach, but only if all partners intensify the response, particularly in the remaining two endemic countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan.