{"id":144666,"date":"2025-11-17T14:30:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T14:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/144666\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T14:30:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T14:30:08","slug":"pakistan-launches-drive-to-vaccinate-57m-children-against-measles-rubella-and-polio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/144666\/","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan launches drive to vaccinate 57M children against measles, rubella and polio"},"content":{"rendered":"

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan on Monday began a two-week nationwide vaccination campaign targeting more than 57 million children, aiming to curb rising cases of measles, rubella and polio<\/a>, the country\u2019s National Emergency Operations Center said.<\/p>\n

The drive, running through Nov. 29, will provide measles and rubella shots to 34.5 million children and administer polio drops to 23.3 million, it said in a statement. The campaign follows training by the World Health Organization of more than 140,000 health workers to support vaccination teams.<\/p>\n

Measles typically begins with a high fever and a rash that spreads from the face to the neck. While most children recover, the disease remains a leading cause of death among young children, according to WHO.<\/p>\n

Over the past three years, Pakistan has reported more than 131,000 measles cases, highlighting the urgency of the effort.<\/p>\n

Though drives against polio are frequently launched<\/a> in Pakistan, despite militant attacks on vaccination teams and the police officers who escort them, campaigns against measles and rubella drives are usually launched every two to three years.<\/p>\n

According to the World Health Organization, Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan remain the only two countries where polio, a potentially fatal, paralyzing virus, hasn\u2019t been stopped, according to WHO.<\/p>\n

Since January, Pakistan has recorded 30 new polio cases, a setback in the fight to eradicate the crippling disease among children. Militants in Pakistan falsely claim that vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.<\/p>\n

Since the 1990s, more than 200 polio workers and police officers assigned to protect them have been killed in attacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ISLAMABAD — Pakistan on Monday began a two-week nationwide vaccination campaign targeting more than 57 million children, aiming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[82818,1597,4103,1595,103,61,60,16082,82817,47645,268],"class_list":["post-144666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-82818","tag-article","tag-children","tag-general-news","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-measles","tag-polio-and-post-polio-syndrome","tag-rubella","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}