The World Health Organization has said that with the registration of four new cases of type 1 wild poliovirus, the total number of confirmed polio cases in Afghanistan since the start of 2026 has risen to 19.<\/p>\n
According to the organisation\u2019s latest Eastern Mediterranean Region report, the new cases were recorded in Herat, Paktika and Kandahar provinces. Two cases were identified in the districts of Shindand and Adraskan in Herat, while Dila district in Paktika and Arghistan district in Kandahar each reported one new case.<\/p>\n
The report, covering the week ending August 16, said a total of 22 type 1 poliovirus cases had been confirmed in the Eastern Mediterranean Region in 2026. Of these, 19 were recorded in Afghanistan and three in Pakistan.<\/p>\n
The World Health Organization also said the virus continues to circulate in Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to the report, 58 positive environmental samples have been recorded in Afghanistan and 118 in Pakistan since the start of this year.<\/p>\n
Based on last year\u2019s figures, Afghanistan recorded 21 polio cases in 2025 and Pakistan 31. Afghanistan and Pakistan remain the only two countries in the world where wild poliovirus is still endemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WHO says Afghanistan’s confirmed polio cases have risen to 19 after four new type 1 wild poliovirus cases were reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-important-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}