Five new cases of polio were reported in Pakistan, taking the number of those affected this year to 143, a media report said today.
One of the new cases is an infant in a suburb of Quetta, making it first polio case in the provincial capital in 2014 and the second in Balochistan, the Express Tribune reported.
A WHO official confirmed that one-year-old Gul Muhammed, a resident of Eastern Bypass area, has contracted the virus, adding that he had been administered polio drops during the last seven campaigns in the area.
"It is a wild type-1 polio case. He received three POV doses through routine vaccination and more than seven doses through SIAs," he said.
According to the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa health department and the National Institute of Health here, the first new polio victim in the tribal areas is the 24-month-old son of Jan Said, a resident of Khyber.
The second child is 16-month-old Hamid of North Waziristan.
Two more cases from the same province are 15-month-old Marwan from Bannu and 12-month-old Shukatullah from Tank.
Pakistan already is facing travel restrictions imposed by the World Health Organisation.
Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan are the countries where the polio virus is endemic.
