A few days earlier, a high-level meeting was arranged on polio eradication. According to media reports, the meeting compared the polio cases data for the first three months of the ongoing year with the last three months of 2024 and expressed great satisfaction that there was an 80% decrease in the number of polio case when comparing these two quarters.

Where political leaders and non-technical persons could be excused for not knowing the science behind this apparent "improvement", the health team should have briefed their leaders that the reason we have six cases in the first quarter has nothing to do with the quality of polio campaigns in these months.

But today proceedings of another high-level meeting have been published by the newspapers. The meeting was headed by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who was pleased to learn that only six new cases of the deadly virus have been identified in the first three months of 2025 when compared with the last three months of 2024.

These talking points for the prime minister or other high-level officials as well as press briefings are normally carefully prepared and vetted by technical teams to ensure that there is no scientific inaccuracy. However, it........

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