Policeman guarding polio team gunned down in Pakistan

By Aamir Latif

KARACHI, Pakistan (AA) – A policeman was gunned down in an armed attack targeting anti-polio vaccinators in southwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, an official confirmed.

The attack took place in the remote Pisheen district of southwestern Balochistan province, which borders neighboring Iran and Afghanistan.

Pisheen Deputy Commissioner Yasir Khan Bazai told reporters that a group of unknown assailants targeted the vaccinators when they were engaged in administering the anti-polio vaccine to children as part of a countrywide drive aimed at containing the crippling disease.

It came only a day after Anti-Polio Day was observed across the world.

Frequent armed attacks coupled with refusal from parents to get their children vaccinated on faux religious grounds have led the South Asian nation to continuously miss the mark of a polio-free country.

Pakistan is one of the two countries – the other being Afghanistan – where polio still exists and the country remains under a polio-linked travel restriction imposed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The UN health agency made it mandatory in 2014 for all those traveling from Pakistan to carry a polio vaccination certificate. The ban is extended every six months.

Some 20 cases, mostly in the restive North Waziristan tribal region near the Afghanistan border, have been reported from different parts of the country in 2022, according to official statistics.

Last year, one polio case was reported in the South Asian nuclear country compared to 84 in 2020 and 179 in 2019.

Some militant groups often target vaccinators, mainly in border areas of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkwa and Balochistan provinces.

They see anti-polio campaigns as part of an elaborate anti-Muslim, Western conspiracy and often issue death threats to vaccinators, mainly women, for administrating the vital vaccines to children.

Many people, especially in rural Pakistan, believed that the vaccine is part of a Western conspiracy, which aims to sterilize Muslim children.

Media reports said around 150 people associated with the drive, including security personnel, have been killed in Pakistan since December 2012.