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PAKISTAN-UNREST-ATTACK-HEALTH-POLIO
Pakistan policeman killed as blast hits polio vaccine team
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 18, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – A policeman was killed and
two others wounded Tuesday by a roadside bomb aimed at polio vaccination
workers in Pakistan’s restive northwest, officials said.
The attack came a day after Islamabad launched a nationwide anti-polio
drive, aiming to immunise tens of millions of children in Pakistan — one of
only three countries, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, where the crippling
disease remains endemic.
Opposition to inoculations grew after the CIA organised a fake
vaccination drive to help track down Al-Qaeda’s former leader Osama Bin Laden
in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.
According to Captain Wahid Mehmood, a district police chief, a police
van monitoring the polio team was hit on the outskirts of the northwestern
city of Dera Ismail Khan.
“It was an IED (improvised explosive device) explosion in which one of
our policemen got martyred while two others were wounded”, Mehmood told AFP.
Sadaqat Khan, a local police official, confirmed the toll.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the Pakistani
Taliban and other militants have targeted polio vaccinators in the past.
The latest attack took place as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres —
who is in Pakistan on a three-day visit — met frontline workers of the
poliop rogramme.
“My appeal to all leaders, religious leaders, community leaders, is to
fully support the Government of Pakistan and other governments around the
world to make sure that we will be able to fully eradicate polio”, he said.
The nationwide polio vaccination campaign aims to vaccinate some 39
million children.
Tuesday’s attack follows a devastating year in Pakistan’s long fight
against polio, with at least 17 cases reported in 2020 so far.
In 2019, the number of polio cases jumped to 144 from just 12 in 2018.
Even as Pakistan has tried to eliminate polio, a new challenge has
emerged in the form of a growing global movement against vaccinations.
The phenomenon has attracted adherents worldwide, fuelled by medically
baseless claims and proliferated on social media resulting in a resurgence of
once-eradicated, highly contagious diseases.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1948 hrs