An official said on Friday that Pakistani health authorities discovered the polio virus in a child, the first case of the disease in the country, in 2024, in a setback to global efforts to eradicate the disease. Doctor Shahzad Baig, head of the polio control program in Pakistan, said that the virus infected the lower extremities of the child, who is 30 months old, in the Balochistan province, southwest of the country. This was the first case of polio infection in the region in more than two years, posing a new challenge to the disease eradication program, which is jointly funded by the United Nations and the Gates Foundation. It is noteworthy that polio cases reached their peak in Pakistan, at 147, in 2019, but declined to reach six last year, which revived hopes that the virus could be eliminated from the latest global outbreak, along with neighboring Afghanistan.
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