Militant attacks and misinformation are hampering Pakistan’s battle to eradicate polio, but dedicated volunteer health workers are determined to fight on.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where the virus remains endemic, affecting mostly children under five and sometimes causing lifelong paralysis.
Polio cases are rising in Pakistan, with 45 registered this year, up from six in 2023 and only one in 2021.
Polio can be easily prevented by the oral administration of a few drops of vaccine, but in rural Pakistan, health workers risk their lives to administer it.
Last week, seven people, including five children, were killed in a bomb attack targeting police guarding vaccine workers. Days earlier, militants gunned down two police escorts.
“When we hear of attacks on polio vaccination teams, it deeply saddens us,” said health worker Zainab Sultan, 28, as she went door to door in Panam Dehri, northwest Pakistan. “Our responsibility is to protect people from disability, vaccinate children, and make them healthy members of society.”
False claims In the past, clerics falsely claimed the vaccine contained pork or alcohol, forbidding its consumption by Muslims.
A fake vaccination campaign by the US CIA in 2011 to track Osama bin Laden compounded the mistrust.
Recently, militants have targeted armed police escorts in their campaigns of violence against the state.
Pakistan has seen a dramatic increase in attacks since the Taliban’s return in Afghanistan in 202
