Like the program of the Pakistan polio has made significant progress in the fight to eradicate the disease, he was hit by a devastating bout of violence. Six workers of the vaccination campaign were killed yesterday and today, and two others were injured in attacks in Karachi and Peshawar in the northwest part of the country.
health officials have suspended three days of the country's mass vaccination campaign over Karachi while investigating the attacks and strengthen security to protect the health of workers. Authorities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where Peshawar is located, intends to go ahead with vaccinations because they believe that the attack is not related to the activities of polio.
The attacks come five months after two incidents where two polio workers have been shot and another was killed in Karachi. In mid-October, another worker polio was shot dead in Quetta in Baluchistan province.
Yesterday, a male polio worker was shot and now four women were killed in about 20 minutes of each other in three apparently coordinated attacks in the slums of Karachi, including Gadap where the shooting took place in July. Another woman was killed in Peshawar. Taliban insurgents have repeatedly threatened the campaign workers, but so far no one has claimed responsibility for the current or prior attacks. Pakistani officials and international groups that support the campaign against polio are still trying to piece together what happened, said Bruce Aylward, who heads the Initiative for Global Polio Eradication (GPEI) at the World Trade Organization Health in Geneva, Switzerland.
"The implications of how [of the attacks] execution beyond polio," Aylward said, because targeting health workers will deprive Pakistani children receive other health services base as well. Local leaders and community authorities have "learned to take responsibility and ensure that the message is that this is not acceptable," said Aylward.
Pakistan is one of three other hotspots of polio in the world. After cases skyrocketed in 2011, the country has intensified its eradication efforts, and there have been only 56 cases so far this year, down from 173 this time last year. The worst reaction to these "horrible, terrible" events would be to let the opportunity be squandered, Aylward said. Planning is already underway for the vaccination campaigns in January in the low transmission season is called when the "virus is at its lowest," he said, and GPEI will continue to support polio drive in Pakistan after . "We will get this done."
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