At a time when health workers are struggling to vaccinate children against polio despite floods and devastation across the country, poliovirus has crippled another child in the Tehsil Ghulam Khan of North Waziristan district, raising the tally of cases to 15 this year, the health authorities said on Saturday.

“A 17-month boy in North Waziristan has been paralysed by wild polio in the 14th case from the district this year. The child suffering from polio-induced disabilities had onset of paralysis on August 1,” an official of the National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination (NHS,R&C) said, while quoting Pakistan’s Polio Laboratory at the National Institute of Health (NIH) on Friday.

This is the 14th case from district North Waziristan this year, the health official said, adding that all of the cases in Pakistan in 2022 have been reported from southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, including 14 from North Waziristan and one from Lakki Marwat among the children under two years of age.