islamabad despite a steady rise in coronavirus cases pakistan on monday launched a fiveday vaccination campaign against polio amid tight security hoping to eradicate the crippling childrens disease this yearthe drive is the first antipolio campaign in 2021 the previous campaign took place last august during a brief decline in fatalities and infections from the coronavirus and included former taliban strongholds bordering afghanistanthis time polio workers will try to vaccinate 40 million children across pakistan while at the same time following social distancing measures and other precautions due to the coronavirus said zulfiqar babakhel a spokesman for the polio programsupplementary vitamin a drops will be given to help build general immunity he said adding that the polio workers will don gloves and face masks and go housetohouse during the campaignthere has lately been a steady increase in both fatalities from covid19 and the number of new infections in the country pakistan has registered more than 504000 cases of the virus including 10676 deaths since the first infection was detected in february on monday it reported 1877 new cases and 32 deaths in the past 24 hourspakistan had hoped to eliminate polio back in 2018 when only 12 cases were reported but in the years since there has been an uptick in new casespakistan and neighboring afghanistan are the only two remaining countries in the world where polio is endemic after nigeria was last year declared free of the wild polio viruseradicating polio requires that more than 90 of children be immunized typically in mass campaigns involving millions of health workers a challenge under the coronavirus pandemic the world health organization had initially aimed to wipe out polio by 2000 a deadline repeatedly pushed back and missedthe taliban and other militants regularly stage attacks on polio teams and security forces escorting them as well as vaccination centers and health workers claiming the antipolio drive is part of an alleged western conspiracy to sterilize children or collect intelligencethese attacks increased after it was revealed that a fake hepatitis vaccination campaign was used as a ruse by the cia in the hunt for alqaida leader osama bin laden bin laden was killed by us commandos in 2011 in pakistan