Pakistan | Polio Worker, 2 Cops Shot Dead During Inoculation Drive: Report

A child was also injured as he was shot in the leg. He has been admitted to hospital. Assailants managed to flee.

A Pakistani health worker administers polio drops to child

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Two police officers assigned to polio vaccination teams, and a polio worker, were shot dead by unidentified assailants in Pakistan during an inoculation drive on Tuesday, Pakistan daily Dawn reported, quoting North Waziristan district's polio emergency response unit. The incident took place in Datta Khel area of the district.

Quoting an official, the report said the victims were attacked when they were busy with polio vaccinations. A child was also injured as he was shot in the leg. He has been moved to a hospital, the report said, adding that the assailants managed to flee.

A search operation is on to trace them, the official was quoted as saying.

North Waziristan is the area from where Pakistan’s all 11 polio cases of 2022 so far have been reported. In 2021, the country had reported only one case, the Dawn report said.

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With an aim to vaccinate 12.6 million children in all four provinces of Pakistan, the second Sub-National Immunisation Days (SNIDs) campaign of this year began on Monday, the report said, adding that the campaign will cover 25 very high-risk districts and children under the age of five will be vaccinated. 

According to the report, over 100,000 trained health workers have been engaged in the campaign.

Wild Polio Virus In North Waziristan

There has been an outbreak of Wild Polio Virus (WPV) in the North Waziristan district, and the emergency committee under the International Health Regulations or IHR (2005) on the international spread of poliovirus recently expressed concern over this. The IHR said WPV circulation in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) increased risks to the rest of Pakistan.

“The key challenges that hampered progress in southern KP include the complex security situation, specifically in North and South Waziristan, which resulted in inadequate access, missed children and reduced quality of campaigns,” the IHR was quoted as saying in the Dawn report. 

It also listed refusals to vaccination as one of the challenges, the others being female frontline workers, weak health infrastructure and shortcomings in service delivery.

“All WPV cases reported in 2022 are zero dose for routine immunisation, zero dose or under-immunised in supplementary immunisation activities (SIAs), and are from refusal families,” the IHR said, according to the report.