Japan has announced a US$4.3 million grant to help Pakistan buy oral polio vaccines for its 2027 immunisation campaigns, adding new funding to a long-running effort to stop transmission of the virus.
The Pakistan Polio Eradication Initiative plans to use the grant to procure more than 28 million doses. The agreement, announced in Islamabad on 13 November, supports the purchase and delivery of vaccines; it does not mean those doses have already been administered.
The contribution comes as Pakistan works towards a national target of interrupting poliovirus transmission by the end of 2027. That is an objective of its emergency action plan, rather than a date by which eradication has already been assured.
Funding for next year’s campaigns
The newly signed grant is larger than the US$3.5 million contribution announced by Japan in November 2025. That earlier funding was intended to buy more than 24 million doses for campaigns during 2026. The two grants support different campaign years, even though both are part of the same partnership.
Japan has supported Pakistan’s polio response since 1996. Its contributions through UNICEF over that period total more than US$248 million in grants and loans. The latest agreement continues that cooperation with Pakistani health authorities and the country’s eradication programme.
The new figure is a quantity of vaccine doses, not a count of children already reached. Children may receive doses in more than one campaign round, and buying vaccine is only one stage of a wider immunisation effort. Vaccines must also reach the places where teams are working and be given to children who need them.
Each national immunisation drive in Pakistan aims to reach more than 45 million children under the age of five. More than 400,000 frontline health workers support the campaigns, which sit alongside routine vaccination and surveillance for the virus.
Reaching children in every area
Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan are the two countries where transmission of wild poliovirus has not yet been interrupted. Their shared border and movement between communities make coordination important to the effort to stop the virus spreading.
Vaccination teams face particular difficulties in parts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where insecurity and restrictions on access can make it harder to reach children consistently. Campaign quality can vary between districts, so a national target does not by itself establish that every community has been covered.
Pakistan’s programme has used door-to-door campaigns to reach families. It has also coordinated vaccination activity with Afghanistan, while health teams use surveillance to identify infections and areas where further action may be needed.
By 5 November, the regional polio laboratory in Islamabad had confirmed nine wild poliovirus cases in Pakistan during 2026. Seven were in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and two in Sindh. The figure is a snapshot from that date, rather than a claim about the number confirmed since then.
Pakistan recorded 74 polio cases in 2024 and 31 in 2025. The decrease illustrates progress, but continued detections show why the remaining effort depends on reaching children who have missed vaccinations as well as maintaining protection in other areas.
Why repeated vaccination matters
Polio is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus. It mainly affects children under five, although unvaccinated people of any age can become infected. The virus spreads chiefly through the faecal-oral route and can invade the nervous system, causing irreversible paralysis in some cases.
There is no cure for polio, but vaccination can prevent the disease. Oral and inactivated polio vaccines are both used in immunisation programmes, and multiple doses help build protection. The new Japanese grant is intended for oral vaccine, which can be given by mouth during campaigns.
Surveillance also plays a part. Detecting the virus can help health authorities identify where transmission persists and plan a response, even as they work to maintain routine immunisation and reach children in campaign rounds.
For Pakistan’s 2026–27 emergency plan, the immediate task is to turn funding, vaccine supplies and frontline work into sustained coverage. The end-of-2027 target will depend on implementation across affected areas, not on the grant announcement alone.
