Over the past five decades, Pakistan, in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), has provided lifesaving vaccines to around 160 million children and 130 million mothers, preventing them from several deadly diseases.
According to WHO, Pakistan ranks among the top five countries worldwide for absolute reductions in child deaths due to vaccination.
The vaccination has averted 2.6 million child deaths from preventable diseases, in addition to eradicating smallpox, reducing paralytic polio cases by 99.8% and ensuring neonatal tetanus-free areas for 80% of the country’s population, the WHO added.
Over the last five decades, since the founding of Pakistan’s Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) in 1978, Pakistan has protected over 160 million children and 130 million mothers with life-saving vaccines in collaboration with the World Health Organization and partners.
The WHO said due to medical science, Pakistan eradicated smallpox in 1976 and paved the way for the launch of an immunization programme that has ever since averted 2.6 million child deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases, proving that, for every generation, vaccines work and save lives.
Globally, vaccines have saved 154 million lives since 1974, and Pakistan ranks among the top five countries worldwide for absolute reductions in child deaths as a result of vaccination.
Since 1994, powered by the medical science behind vaccines, Pakistan has reduced paralytic polio cases by 99.8% – from an estimated 20,000 cases to 31 in 2025.
The WHO added, Pakistan also obtained the WHO certification for the elimination of maternal and neonatal tetanus (MNTE) in Punjab, Sindh, Pakistan-Administered Kashmir (PAK), Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), and Gilgit-Baltistan, ensuring that approximately 80% of the country’s population now lives in areas where neonatal tetanus no longer poses a public health threat, with less than one case per 1,000 live births.
WHO estimates that Pakistan’s EPI averts up to 17% of all childhood mortality, making immunization the most cost-effective single public health intervention available in the country.
“This achievement is the result of joint efforts by governments, partners, frontline health workers, communities and parents across the country.”
Under the leadership of the Government of Pakistan, and with support from Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, every year, WHO supports the immunization of over seven million children and 5.5 million women across the country to protect them against 13 vaccine-preventable diseases, in addition to the vaccination of 45 million children against polio through multiple supplementary immunization campaigns.