A police officer guarding polio vaccination team is shot dead in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa’s Bajaur district on Wednesday.
The only countries where polio is still common are Pakistan and Afghanistan, where insurgents regularly attack immunization crews and their guards.
With two cases reported so far this year and 73 instances last year—a dramatic leap from just six in 2023—polio cases have been on the rise in Pakistan.
The incident happened in the Dama Dola Serai neighborhood of Mamund tehsil, Bajaur, during an ongoing anti-polio operation. Officer Rab Di Mal Shah was shot and killed by unidentified assailants who fired randomly at him.
Waqas Rafiq, the District Police Officer (DPO) of Bajaur stated that officials have started off an investigation to put down the accused.
Rafiq told AFP that increased terrorist activity in the area has already caused the district’s polio campaign to be postponed.
“Despite the attack, the campaign is proceeding in all areas except where the incident occurred,” he said.
Niaz Muhammad, a police spokesman, stated: “The officer was immediately killed when two people on a motorcycle started fire. Thankfully, the polio team was uninjured.
Afghanistan and Bajaur district are separated by a 52-kilometer border.
Although polio is completely avoidable with a simple oral vaccine, it predominantly affects children under five and can cause paralysis that lasts a lifetime.
In the last ten years, extremist attacks have claimed the lives of hundreds of police officers and medical personnel.
It is important to mention that a misinformation regarding polio vaccination is causing all these attacks on polio workers.
In the past some miscreants spread misinformation that polio vaccine contained pork or alcohol. They urged people to avoid this vaccination to save their Imaan.
