Parents in Jhang waiting for a knock on the door from a polio vaccination team this week should know one thing first: Jhang is not part of this round. The Sub-National Immunisation Days (SNID) campaign now under way across Punjab covers 13 districts — and Jhang’s name is not on that list.
The campaign runs from 2 to 8 November 2026 in Lahore, with the other 12 districts covered over four days: three days of vaccination followed by one follow-up day. Across Punjab it aims to reach approximately 9.3 million children under five in 1,161 union councils, with 77,894 personnel mobilised, including 31,869 mobile teams, 1,776 fixed teams and 1,150 transit teams, supported by 1,211 union council medical officers and 6,205 area in-charges.
The 13 districts, as listed by the Punjab Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), are Bhakkar, Chakwal, Dera Ghazi Khan, Kot Addu, Lahore, Layyah, Mianwali, Multan, Murree, Muzaffargarh, Rajanpur, Rawalpindi and Rahim Yar Khan. Lahore has the largest target, with more than 2.28 million children, followed by Rahim Yar Khan with over 1.14 million, Multan with more than one million and Rawalpindi with approximately 990,000.
That list is worth reading closely in Jhang, because several of the districts around it are included. Bhakkar lies to the west, Layyah and Muzaffargarh to the south-west, and Multan further south — all three are in the campaign. Jhang, sitting between them and the Faisalabad division, is not. So a family hearing about vaccination teams working in a neighbouring district should not assume the same teams will come to their own street in Jhang this week. This is a targeted, sub-national round, not a province-wide one: it goes to selected districts only, and Jhang was not selected for this round.
Nationally, the same campaign covers 97 selected districts and aims to vaccinate around 24 million children under five, with more than 200,000 frontline workers. It is the fifth large polio drive of 2026 and the third sub-national round of the year, running at the same time in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the last two countries where wild poliovirus remains endemic.
The reason the round matters, even in a district it does not visit, is that poliovirus does not respect district boundaries. By 1 November, eight wild poliovirus cases had been reported in Pakistan this year, six in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and two in Sindh, including a 13-month-old girl from Bara tehsil in Khyber district. The national appeal issued on 3 November by the Pakistan Polio Eradication Initiative urged parents to make sure every child under five receives two drops of vaccine in every campaign round, stressing that repeated vaccination strengthens a child’s immunity and that a child must receive the drops in each round regardless of previous vaccinations.
For Jhang, the practical meaning of all this is straightforward, and it is important not to overstate it. This article does not claim that polio vaccination in Jhang has stopped, and it does not announce a Jhang date for a future round, because no such date appears in the reports checked for this article. What it establishes is narrower and more useful: no door-to-door SNID teams are scheduled for Jhang in the 2–8 November round, because the district is not among the 13 listed by the Punjab EOC. Parents who are unsure about their child’s vaccination status should check with their nearest health facility rather than waiting for a campaign team that is not coming this week, and should keep their child’s vaccination record to hand for the next round that does include the district.
It is also worth noting what the campaign’s organisers asked of communities where teams are working, because the same advice will apply when Jhang’s turn comes: cooperate with vaccination teams, make sure no eligible child is missed, and allow follow-up visits for children missed on the first visit. Punjab EOC Coordinator Khalid Parvaiz put it plainly at the 31 October review meeting: polio has no cure, but it is preventable through vaccination, and parents must ensure every eligible child receives the drops whenever teams visit their homes.
So the message for Jhang this week is a clarifying one, not an alarming one. The campaign is real, it is large, and it is happening right now in neighbouring districts — but its teams are not scheduled for Jhang. Knowing that now saves families a week of waiting for a knock that was never planned, and leaves them ready, records in hand, for the next round that does include their district.
Source: The Nation, “EOC reviews preparations for November polio campaign across 13 districts”, published 31 October 2026; Associated Press of Pakistan via UrduPoint, “Polio Initiative Urges Parents To Vaccinate All Children Under Five”, published 3 November 2026; Business Recorder, “Pakistan reports eighth polio case of 2026 from KP’s Khyber district”, published 1 November 2026.
