Unidentified assailants shot dead three vaccinators now northwest Pakistan today. Deaths are on the heels of a series of attacks Monday and Tuesday and bring to nine the total number of polio workers killed in the last three days; two others were injured. In response, Pakistani government officials have suspended the campaign 3 days vaccination against polio which was conducted across the country, said Oliver Rosenbauer, spokesman for the World Health Organization, one of the international partners supporting Pakistan's efforts to eradicate polio.
Details are still emerging, but the shooting took place in Peshawar, Nowshera and Charsadda, all in the northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where another volunteer polio was killed Monday. Tuesday, five polio workers were killed in the megacity of Karachi, the southern tip of the country.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but many suspect the Taliban, which opposed the vaccination against polio, calling it conspiracy to sterilize Muslim children and threatening the polio workers.
There is no word yet on when the vaccination campaigns in Pakistan, usually conducted four to six times a year, could resume. "For sure this is a major setback" to the global campaign to eradicate polio, Rosenbauer said, calling the killings "horrible." The next step, he said, is to identify and address the root causes of these attacks and to "create a first-line environment where health workers can operate safely." In the long history of global eradication campaign, vaccination campaigns were temporarily suspended in a number of countries, but resumed when the various factions to reach "common ground on health protection of children," said Rosenbauer.
Since the global initiative to eradicate polio began in 1988, polio cases worldwide have dropped more than 99%. Pakistan is one of three countries, as well as Nigeria and Afghanistan, where the virus remains entrenched.
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