KABUL-
An Afghan girl has been diagnosed with polio in Kabul – the capital’s first case since the Taliban’s fall in 2001.
The health ministry has ordered a vaccination campaign across the capital after the three-year-old was diagnosed.
The girl, Sakina, belongs to a very poor community of Kuchis, formerly nomadic herdsmen, now settled on a hillside in the east of the capital.
Her father is a taxi driver who often goes to the frontier region with Pakistan, and has now taken her there for treatment.
Polio remains endemic in Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern Nigeria, but has been almost wiped out around the world.
In all three countries right-wing extremists have forcefully prevented polio eradication campaigns from taking place.
Since the Afghan Taliban changed their policy, allowing vaccination in recent years, there has been a decline in cases in Afghanistan.
There were 80 cases in 2011, 37 in 2012, and 14 in 2013.
The polio strain in Afghanistan and Pakistan is identical, and with 1.5 million children crossing the frontier every year, cross-border transmission is inevitable.
Nearly all of the cases in Afghanistan last year were in regions close to the Pakistan border.
Afghanistan has health workers at the border crossings, attempting to monitor all children who cross, and vaccinating those at risk.
But many people do not cross at formal customs posts, instead using tracks across the mountains and deserts that line the porous frontier.
