Pakistan’s first HPV vaccination campaign reached 71% of its target girls, according to government data reported by Gavi. A post-campaign survey conducted with WHO oversight put the figure at 53.4%, The News reported in March.
The gap is about 18 percentage points on a target of roughly 13 million girls aged 9 to 14. According to The News’s account, the survey report said administrative coverage was considerably higher than its own estimate and offered two possible explanations: over-reporting of doses and inaccurate population counts.
Aware Pakistan did not locate a public reconciliation of the two figures. The question is pressing because Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is scheduled to start its own campaign in November, with the earlier numbers still unexplained.
Five Reports, On The HPV Campaign
Pakistan’s first HPV drive targeted about 13 million girls aged 9 to 14. Every circle below is 1 girl in 100. Choose a figure to see how it compares with the independent survey.
What the survey found, by area
Share of eligible girls vaccinated, per the October 2025 survey reported by The News on March 7, 2026.
Timeline
The campaign began on Sept. 15, 2025, in Punjab, Sindh, Islamabad Capital Territory and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, according to Gavi and UNICEF Pakistan. WHO said it supported the training of more than 49,000 health workers for the drive.
The first figure to circulate came while the campaign was still running. Dawn reported on Sept. 25 that about 4.5 million girls, or 34% of the target, had been vaccinated, and repeated the number the next day. That count was taken before the campaign ended and was never meant as a final result. This story does not treat it as one.
By the close of the original window, about half of the intended doses had been given, Dawn and Geo News reported on Sept. 28. The campaign was then extended by three days, from Sept. 29 to Oct. 1.
After the extension, coverage reached 71%, or about 9.2 million girls, according to government data in Gavi’s VaccinesWork report of Oct. 8. The same report said 18 districts remained below 60%.
A WHO feature dated Jan. 6, 2026 gave a slightly different account. It said more than 9.6 million girls were reached and described the coverage rate as 66%. By Aware Pakistan’s calculation, 9.6 million girls out of 13 million is about 74%, and a 66% rate would imply a target near 14.5 million. Aware Pakistan did not find a public explanation for the difference. It could reflect rounding or a revised target population, but no source reviewed says which.
The independent survey sits below all of these except the mid-campaign count. The News reported on March 7 that it was carried out in October 2025 with technical oversight from WHO and the Federal Directorate of Immunization (FDI). It covered 988 clusters, listed 19,480 households and interviewed 7,769 girls, with an 85% response rate. Field work was done by RIZ Consulting and RBC Global Consultants. About 10% of the girls interviewed were out of school.
Results varied widely by area. Coverage was 68.6% in Sindh, 47.6% in Punjab, 44.5% in Islamabad and 39.2% in AJK. Punjab has the largest population of the four.
Aware Pakistan has not seen the full survey report and relies on The News’s account of it. No source reviewed gives the survey’s margin of error.
Administrative coverage counts doses recorded by vaccinators against an estimated population of eligible girls. A household survey estimates coverage by asking families and checking records. The two methods can produce different results, and what matters here is the size of the difference. The survey report, as The News described it, treated the gap as a sign that administrative figures may be overstated or that the population estimates behind them may be wrong.
The numbers matter because of what the campaign is meant to prevent. WHO has said Pakistan records more than 5,000 new cervical cancer cases and about 3,000 deaths from the disease each year, according to its cervical cancer elimination commitments of June 2025.
The campaign also began with little public awareness. A Sindh survey reported by The News on Aug. 7, 2025, found that 5% of caregivers had heard of HPV and 2% knew of the vaccine. Misinformation followed. Dawn and Geo reported that false claims linking the vaccine to infertility spread on social media and led some parents to refuse it.
WHO said the vaccine is meant to move into routine immunization for 9-year-old girls after the campaign. That plan depends on knowing which girls were reached and which were missed.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is scheduled to hold its campaign in November 2026, Pakistan Today reported on July 11. The province plans to target about 2.9 million girls, of whom about 1.6 million are in school and 1.3 million are out of school, according to that report and The Express Tribune. Health workers in the province were trained in June, according to local news reports. Aware Pakistan found no announcement of a postponement as of Sept. 30.
The out-of-school group is large in the KP plan. In the national survey, out-of-school girls made up about 10% of those interviewed. Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan are planned for 2027, according to Dawn’s Sept. 25, 2025, report.
Several basic questions remain unanswered in the public record. Aware Pakistan did not find whether the survey has been published in full, what its margin of error is, or whether the target population changed after launch. Nor did it find district-level counts of girls vaccinated, a figure for doses given after the official campaign window, or an explanation of why WHO’s 9.6 million and 66% do not match a 13 million target.
Publishing the survey in full, together with district-level administrative data and the target population used, would allow the two sets of figures to be compared directly. That comparison could inform the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa campaign before it begins.
