With over 90 per cent of Pakistan’s polio cases genetically linked to Peshawar, the World Health Organisation on Friday described the northwestern city as the world’s “largest reservoir” of endemic poliovirus.
According to the latest genomic sequencing results of the Regional Reference laboratory for polio, 83 of 91 polio cases in Pakistan in 2013 were genetically linked to the virus circulating in Peshawar.
Moreover, 12 of the 13 cases reported from Afghanistan last year were directly linked to Peshawar.
“With more than 90 per cent of the current polio cases in the country genetically linked to Peshawar, the (city) is now the largest reservoir of endemic poliovirus in the world,” WHO said in a statement. “As much of the population of the (tribal areas) moves through Peshawar, the city acts as an amplifier of the poliovirus,” it said. PTI