Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s meeting with Bill Gates in New York offers an important reminder: Pakistan remains one of the last battlegrounds against polio. The prime minister pledged eradication “once and for all.” Strong words, indeed, but they will mean little unless matched by strong governance at home.
Pakistan has already reported 27 new polio cases in 2025, more than any other country. Each case represents a child whose life is permanently altered. For years, governments have congratulated themselves on progress that was never truly theirs.
The decline in cases during the pandemic was the result of lockdowns, not robust vaccination systems. Now that normal life has resumed, the virus is spreading again, that too, with an alarming speed. Environmental samples from Punjab and Sindh even confirm its presence in areas once considered safe.
The missed opportunities are glaring. More than 200,000 children were left unvaccinated in recent drives. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, misinformation continues to fuel resistance, leaving thousands unprotected.
For health workers, the campaign has demanded extraordinary courage: more than 200 vaccinators and security escorts have been killed in attacks since 2009. Their sacrifice is immeasurable, but it should never have been demanded so heavily of them.
The danger now extends beyond polio. On Thursday, a lady health worker was beaten by local women in Mandi Bahauddin as she was administering HPV vaccines to schoolgirls in violent resistance to a campaign meant to protect young women against cervical cancer. The forces that cripple polio eradication are also undermining broader preventive health efforts.
Until Pakistan confronts extremist propaganda with clarity and secures its vaccinators with the same seriousness it protects its leaders, eradication will remain out of reach.
The abrupt suspension of foreign aid earlier this year has already exposed how dependent we have become on external lifelines: facilities closed overnight, jobs were lost, and millions were left without basic services. No country of 240 million can abdicate responsibility for the health of its own children.
This is the last chance. Failure will not simply mean Pakistan remains polio-endemic. It will mark this country as the one that squandered decades of sacrifice, abandoned its frontline workers, and condemned its children to paralysis because its leaders lacked the courage to act. That is the legacy we stand on the brink of writing.
