Key result
Pakistan polio eradication falters without tailored strategies addressing local insecurity and vaccine hesitancy.
Why the study?
Existing programs deployed in Pakistan to improve polio vaccination rates and the factors contributing to persistent challenges in eradicating the disease needed identification and mapping.
Systematic Review (n=12)
Effective polio eradication in Pakistan requires context-specific strategies that draw on community resources to rebuild trust and strengthen healthcare systems.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Generic strategies may prove inadequate in Pakistan; leaves open optimal community-engaged approaches to address insecurity and hesitancy.
This scoping review aims to identify and map the existing programs deployed in Pakistan to improve polio vaccination rates and understand the factors contributing to the persistent challenges in eradicating the disease. The review followed the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology for scoping reviews. A comprehensive search of PubMed was conducted, limited to publications within the last 6 years (2019-2025), yielding 96 publications. Data extraction and synthesis focused on program descriptions, target populations, implementation timeframes, geographic regions, and reported successes or shortcomings. The review provides a landscape of polio eradication efforts in Pakistan, highlighting gaps and opportunities for future interventions. The review identifies that complete eradication of polio in Pakistan is inhibited by a lack local strategies to target specific context. Such contexts can have barriers that are circumstantial or systemic. Circumstantial problems refer to unavoidable environments that deter vaccination efforts, such as the incidence of natural disasters that destroy sanitation systems or the prevalence of terrorism in a region, deeming it unsafe for healthcare workers to enter. Systemic problems are structural issues that lead to the spread of vaccine hesitancy, which is often rooted in significant mistrust for the healthcare sector. This may reflect both a lack of trust in healthcare stemming from limited access to basic medical facilities and misinformation fueled by conspiracy theories embedded within religious, social, or political narratives. In either case, the most effective response is one that is context-specific, drawing on community resources to rebuild trust and strengthen healthcare systems.
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Zayna Ilahi (2025) conducted a systematic review in Poliomyelitis (n=12). Local Polio Eradication Programs was evaluated on Program effectiveness and barriers to polio eradication. Polio eradication efforts in Pakistan are hindered by a lack of context-specific local strategies to address circumstantial barriers like insecurity and systemic issues like vaccine hesitancy.
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