Peshawar boy disabled by polio

THE NEWS

With only three days left to the start of the New Year, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has reported another polio case taking this year’s nationwide count of the fresh sufferers of the crippling virus to 57. Last year, 194 children were disabled by polio. According to an official of the Polio Control Cell at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, the latest polio case is Ammar Umer, an eight-month-old boy from Peshawar, who has the lifelong physical disability despite receiving two oral polio vaccine doses. He was the sixth polio case from Peshawar until now this year. A look at statistics shows that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has 26 new polio cases this year with three being reported in Mardan and Swabi districts each, two in Torghar, Charsadda and Lakki Marwat districts each and one in Upper Dir, Karak, Haripur, Shangla, DI Khan, Buner and Kohat districts each. As for other cases, 20 surfaced in the northwestern tribal areas (11 in Khyber Agency, five in Bajaur and one each in Kurram, South and North Waziristan agencies).