Health

A six-month-old boy from Jamali Colony in Karachi East has tested positive for wild poliovirus, the city's first confirmed case since December 2024 and Pakistan's seventh of 2026, health officials said on October 19.

BBP Health Desk · October 19, 2026 · 3 min

Pakistan's first nationally representative psychiatric survey, covering nearly 18,000 adults, found 32 percent currently living with a mental or behavioural disorder, published days after the government launched its first National Mental Health Policy.

BBP Health Desk · October 18, 2026 · 4 min

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered a five-member committee to report within 48 hours on how Border Health Services Pakistan priced pilgrim vaccinations at about Rs4,500 a person, up from roughly Rs1,250, after seven drugmakers challenged the contract in court.

BBP Health Desk · October 18, 2026 · 4 min

Pakistan's score on the 2026 Global Hunger Index rose to 25.5, ranking it 106th of 123 countries in the serious hunger category and worse than India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, as the index records the first global reversal in hunger levels since 2018.

BBP Health Desk · October 15, 2026 · 4 min

Doctors at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre say about 25 percent of cancer patients abandon treatment before it is complete, mostly over cost, with full care running Rs3 million to Rs4 million.

BBP Health Desk · October 12, 2026 · 4 min

Sindh's 2026 mpox tally jumped from 43 cases in late September to 93 by October 7, with the death toll climbing to 11 — a surge driven by a critically ill 50-year-old dialysis patient from Nawabshah and a province-wide pattern that keeps adding roughly 20 cases a month.

BBP Health Desk · October 8, 2026 · 5 min

Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Islamabad are all reporting several hundred new dengue cases a day, with three more deaths confirmed — a jump so steep that single-day case counts now exceed what Punjab recorded for the whole of September.

BBP Health Desk · October 7, 2026 · 4 min

A seven-year-old boy from Union Council Ghundi-A in Khyber district's Jamrud tehsil is Pakistan's sixth confirmed wild poliovirus case of 2026, the National Emergency Operations Centre said October 5 — the first of this year's cases to come from outside the Bannu division that has produced four of the previous five.

BBP Health Desk · October 5, 2026 · 4 min

A new FAO assessment finds Pakistan's food system produces plenty of calories but the wrong mix of them — oversupplying cereals, sugar and edible oil while undersupplying fruit, vegetables and pulses. The result: 40% of children under five are stunted, 40% of adults are obese, and the country has the world's highest adult diabetes burden.

BBP Health Desk · October 1, 2026 · 4 min