PESHAWAR: Another security officer, deployed to protect polio vaccination workers, was killed in the Nowshera district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) on Wednesday, police confirmed. The policeman was shot on the third day of a nationwide anti-polio campaign.
Police official Bilal Khan reported to AFP that “Two armed men targeted a police officer assigned to protect a polio team. He was killed on the spot.“
The polio vaccination team remained safe in the attack.
The current anti-polio campaign, which began on October 13 and is set to run through October 19, is targeting 45 million children across the country. This week-long national immunisation drive aims to vaccinate children under the age of five in 159 districts.
This incident follows the killing of a Levies personnel, also guarding a polio team, just a day earlier in the remote area of Anzar Tangay Byakan in Tehsil Matta of KP. The Swat District Police Officer (DPO) stated that the earlier incident occurred while the vaccination workers were performing their duties.
Polio Situation in Pakistan
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries where polio remains endemic. Over the past decade, hundreds of security personnel and health workers have been killed by militants targeting the teams amid widespread misinformation about the vaccine.
Pakistan recorded a surge in polio cases last year, with 74 infections reported, up from just six in 2023. So far this year, 29 polio cases have been recorded nationally. KP has accounted for the highest number of cases this year with 18, followed by nine in Sindh, and one each in Punjab and Gilgit-Baltistan.
Polio is a highly infectious virus that primarily affects children under five, causing lifelong paralysis, but it is easily preventable through the oral vaccine.
