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 The child, called Sakhina, was a member of the Kuchi
nomadic tribe that moves freely across most provinces in Afghanistan
and her family was living in the Kasaba district in eastern Kabul.
The ministry has launched a three-day campaign to vaccinate all
children under five in the area.
"When they went to the hospital after an examination, it became
clear it was a case of polio," Ministry of Health spokesman Kaneshka
Baktash told Reuters.
Baktash said the girl's family moved freely between Afghanistan and
Pakistan and she had probably contracted the illness across the
border.
All but one of 13 cases recorded in Afghanistan last year were
contracted in Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan, the world's largest
reservoir of endemic polio viruses, the World Health Organization
said in January.
Sakhina has been taken to Pakistan for treatment and no other cases
had been discovered in the Afghan capital.
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The battle to eradicate polio is being undermined by the spread
of the virus in Pakistan, where vaccinators are routinely killed by
the Islamist Taliban, who see the program as part of a plot to
sterilize Muslims. It is the only country in the world that recorded
an increase in cases in 2013 according to the WHO.
(Reporting by Jessica Donati and Mirwais
Harooni; editing by Ron Popeski)
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