A three-year-old has been diagnosed with the first case of polio in the Afghan capital Kabul since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, according to the country’s Ministry of Public Health.
Officials have responded with an emergency vaccination drive to prevent the virus making further inroads.
Afghanistan is one of three countries where the disease remains endemic although public health experts believe the case may have been contracted in neighbouring Pakistan, where more than 300,000 children are unvaccinated and infections are on the increase.
Kaneshka Baktash, spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health, said the family were from the Kuchi nomadic tribe and travelled back and forth to Pakistan, and may have been away from home when vaccination teams visited.
He said the virus was of the same type found on the Pakistani side of the border.
The virus affects the central nervous system and can leave its victims with withered limbs or paralysis. It has been all but eradicated from the world and remains only in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.
Health officials believe Afghanistan – where cases have declined from 80 in 2011 to 14 last year -will remain infected with polio so long as Pakistan cannot eradicate the disease. It was the only country to record an increase in infections during 2013.
It is struggling to deal with extremist clerics who warn parents the immunisation will make their children infertile and the Pakistan Taliban, whose commanders have banned vaccination workers from their territory.
Meanwhile, India is celebrating its new polio-free status after going three years without a single case. The country has become a model for the remaining three, having once been one of the biggest sources of the virus.
President Pranab Mukherjee, Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, as well as the health minister and the head of the World Health Organisation are all due at a New Delhi stadium to celebrate victory over polio.