Pakistan has recorded its fifth polio case this year, in a 17-month-old girl in Bannu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, officials said on Tuesday; four of the five cases have come from the Bannu division and the other from Sindh. The tally is well below the 31 cases of 2025 and 74 of 2024, which officials credit to better vaccination campaigns and the winter low-transmission season, but insecurity in Bannu and Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions could let the virus rebound. The case matters because polio is incurable and can cause lifelong paralysis, and Pakistan is one of the last countries where the virus is still circulating.