[Two days ago, in separate events, two police officers who were protecting polio vaccination teams were shot and killed in the northern districts of Buner and Bannu. And a polio worker was injured in a knife attack this week in the eastern city of Lahore.]
By Haroon Janjua
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Security
officials investigating an attack by gunmen on a polio vaccination team on
Thursday
that left one woman dead in the town of Chaman, in Pakistan.
Credit
Asghar Achakzai/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
|
ISLAMABAD
— Two gunmen on motorcycle
shot and killed a polio vaccinator in the southwestern Pakistani city of Chaman
on Thursday, bringing the death toll among vaccinators working in the country’s
anti-polio drive to at least three this week, officials said.
The shooters opened fire on a group of
vaccinators when they were at the front gate of a house in the remote village
of Sultan Zai, near the border with Afghanistan, said Samiullah Agha, who is
the assistant commissioner of Chaman.
Two members of the vaccination team were hit:
Nasreen Bibi, 35, was killed, and Rashida Afzal, 24, was critically wounded,
Mr. Agha said in an interview. Vaccination was suspended for an indeterminate
period of time in the Chaman area after the shooting.
“The gunmen fled after the attack,” Mr. Agha
added. “Security forces have launched a search operation in the area.”
Polio vaccination teams have suffered several
attacks since a countrywide vaccination drive began on April 23. Polio workers,
volunteers and their guards are frequently targeted in the South Asian country.
Islamist militants and hard-line clerics say the vaccination drive is a foreign
plot to sterilize Muslim children and a cover for western spies.
“These are unfortunate incidents,” said Babar
Atta, who is the special adviser on polio to Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime
minister. “We have increased the security of vaccination teams across the
country and are determined to end this crippling disease in Pakistan.”
Hayat Khan, a resident of a tribal area bordering
Afghanistan who runs a shop, said he is skeptical of the polio vaccine. Neither
he nor his parents have taken the vaccine, which can be delivered orally as
drops, and they are living a healthy life, he said.
“We have doubts in our minds about this
western vaccine,” he said. “Tribal people are not sure what they are giving to
our children and what information they are collecting for spying. It’s a
Western agenda, indeed.”
Two days ago, in separate events, two police
officers who were protecting polio vaccination teams were shot and killed in
the northern districts of Buner and Bannu. And a polio worker was injured in a
knife attack this week in the eastern city of Lahore.
Sitara Ayaz, a senator, said the perpetrators
were “humiliating Pakistan internationally.”
“We should be concerned about the killing of
polio workers as it is adding more global pressure on us,” said Ms. Ayaz, who
is a member of the secular Awami National Party. “It is mandatory now to
introduce a comprehensive policy or legislation to get rid of crippling polio
disease in the country.”
Recently the government has started public
education campaigns on the issue, and urged Muslim clerics to inform the
population that the vaccine protects children from a disease that can lead to
paralysis or death.
A global effort to eradicate the disease left
Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria as the only countries that have not stopped
the transmission of the polio virus, according to the World Health
Organization.
The number of polio cases in Pakistan jumped
to eight this year after two new cases were found this week, according to the
website End Polio Pakistan, which shows the country’s polio elimination
efforts.
The number of cases of the disease in the
country dropped to 12 in 2018 from 58 in 2012, according to End Polio Pakistan.
According to an independent tally by the news media, 95 polio workers have been
killed doing their work since 2012.
This is despite the fact that vaccination
efforts in Pakistan have often been the subject of suspicion and unfounded rumors
that suggest the vaccines harm children.
More than 25,000 children were rushed to
hospitals in northwestern Pakistan on Monday after false rumors that polio
drops were making children sick, creating a panic.
A man, Nazar Gul, was detained this month on
suspicion of conspiring against the polio vaccination campaign after a video
went viral that showed Mr. Gul urging students to pretend to faint after
immunization.
