Daily Times

A polio monitoring official was killed late Saturday night when unidentified men opened fire on him in Mamund area of Bajaur district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Radio Pakistan reported on Sunday.

According to police, the body has been handed over to the deceased’s family after medico-legal formalities.

This dangerous hostility to immunisation teams flared last week after rumours on the social media regarding children getting sick after being administered polio vaccine sparked chaos. On April 26, members of the polio eradication teams were attacked in Sindh and Balochistan, while a female polio worker was shot and killed in Chaman. Violent attacks were also reported in Punjab.

An official of KP’s Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) for polio revealed a few days ago that the instances of parents’ refusal to allow health workers to administer anti-polio drops to their children rose by 85 percent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after rumours pertaining to the authenticity of the vaccine provoked hysteria across the province. He said that more than 700,000 families across KP had refused to get their children vaccinated, whereas in the last anti-polio drive – held last month – the number of refusal cases was 57,000. He attributed the alarming increase in the number of refusal cases to rumours spread against the vaccine. In Peshawar alone, the number of refusal cases rose by 79 percent, as about 164,000 out of 800,000 families refused to allow health workers to administer anti-polio drops to their children, he said.

Polio is endemic in only three countries globally – Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria – although a relatively rare strain was also detected in Papua New Guinea last year.

Polio vaccination campaigns have faced stubborn resistance for years in Pakistan. Attacks by militants have also been frequent, with nearly 100 people killed in assaults targeting vaccine teams since 2012.

Despite the opposition, campaigners have reported progress with tens of millions of children vaccinated across the country along with a 96 percent drop in reported polio cases since 2014. But as the country nears its goal of ridding polio from its territory, new headwinds have arisen amid a growing global movement against inoculation.