WUNRN
PAKISTAN - FIVE WOMEN IMMUNIZING
CHILDREN AGAINST POLIO KILLED BY GUNMEN
Website Includes 2 Videos.
Rukhsana Bibi grieves as she touches
the body of her daughter, polio worker Madiha Bibi, killed by unknown gunmen,
at a morgue of local hospital in
Dec. 18,
2012 - Gunmen on motorbikes shot dead five female Pakistani polio vaccination
workers on Tuesday, police said, highlighting resistance to the country’s
immunization campaign.
Four were killed in three different incidents in the
sprawling port city and the fifth in the northwestern city of Peshawar, on the
second day of a nationwide three-day drive against the disease, which is
endemic in Pakistan.
Sagheer Ahmed, the health minister for Sindh province,
of which Karachi is capital, said he had ordered a halt to the anti-polio drive
in the city in the wake of the shootings.
Senior Karachi police officer Shahid Hayat said
another polio worker was shot dead in the city on Monday, but the circumstances
of his death only became clear on Tuesday.
In Peshawar, which lies close to the restive tribal
areas, a haven for militants and hotspot for polio, two attackers on a
motorbike fired on two sisters working on vaccination, killing one, senior
police official Javed Khan told AFP.
The incident took place in Mathra suburb of Peshawar
which borders Mohmand tribal district, Mr. Khan said.
Mr. Hayat blamed “militants who issued a fatwa against
polio vaccination in the past” for the Karachi killings.
Pakistan is one of only three countries where the
highly infectious crippling disease remains endemic, along with Afghanistan and
Nigeria.
But efforts to tackle polio have been hampered over
the years by suspicion over vaccination drives.
The Taliban have banned immunizations in the northwest,
condemning the campaign as a cover for espionage since a Pakistani doctor was
jailed after helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden using a hepatitis vaccination
program.
The ban – to protest against U.S. drone strikes and
because they allege that the anti-polio campaign is a cover for espionage –
risks the health of 240,000 children in North and South Waziristan tribal
areas, officials say.
Tuesday’s killings in Karachi took place in parts of
the city dominated by Pashtuns, Mr. Hayat said. Pashtuns are the dominant
ethnic group in northwest Pakistan and have a sizable migrant population in
Karachi.
WHO, a partner in government efforts to eradicate the
disease, suspended vaccination activities in part of Pakistan’s largest city in
July after a spate of bloody shootings.
A UN doctor from Ghana working on polio eradication
and his driver were shot in part of Karachi and three days later a local
community worker who was part of the same campaign was shot dead in the same
area.
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UN News
Centre
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