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Anti-Polio Worker Shot Dead In Peshawar/Pakistan

2,084 views · Published 29 May 2013 · 0:35 · Indexed 22 October 2026

Channel: Wrath0fKhan · 2013 · People & Blogs

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One female worker was killed in a shooting on a polio team working in Peshawar, leading the WHO to suspend operations in the city. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

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WHO suspends polio drive in Pakistani city after shooting (al-arabiya, May 28, 2013)
http://bit.ly/115bRLg
"The WHO suspended its polio eradication campaign in a Pakistani city on Tuesday after two young workers were shot as they administered drops, the latest attack aimed at the UN-backed operation. The victims of the shooting in the violence-plagued northwestern city of Peshawar were aged 18 and 20. Police said both had died, but medical sources said one had died and one was seriously wounded. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, though many Islamists, including Taliban militants, have long opposed the campaign, convinced that the anti-polio drive is a Western plot to sterilize Muslims. The UN in Pakistan pulled all staff involved in the campaign off the streets last December. Immunization continued in some areas without UN support although many workers refused to go out..."


From the archives:

Taliban renounces war on anti-polio workers (telegraph, May 13, 2013)
http://bit.ly/19jlBoO
The Taliban has ended its war on polio vaccination workers and admitted immunisation is the only way to protect children from the disease, its leadership said in a statement issued today. The announcement comes just weeks after the Afghan government launched a new campaign to immunise more than eight million children between six months and five years old throughout the country. It said it had trained 46,000 volunteers to conduct the campaign which is funded by the American aid agency USAID, the World Health Organisation and Unicef..."

Polio Workers Under Fresh Attack In Pakistan 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnbRyY7Z_88

CIA vaccine program used in bin Laden hunt in Pakistan sparks criticism (washingtonpost, July 22, 2011)
http://wapo.st/nsbClF
"... News of that anti-hepatitis campaign, which U.S. officials said did not succeed in collecting bin Laden DNA, has stirred outrage among international public-health organizations, which say it could deal a stiff blow to efforts to stem polio and expand routine vaccinations in Pakistan and beyond. In a nation swirling with rumors of CIA plots, critics say, this real-life one could cement public suspicions, play to radical clerics' anti-vaccine propaganda and endanger health workers. "This is an example of the abuse of medical care for political or military ends," said Benoit de Gryse, Doctors Without Borders' head of mission in Pakistan, adding that it could cause patients to view health-care providers "as potential suspects." Some religious leaders and Taliban militants warn that vaccines are actually American-sponsored cocktails meant to sterilize or exterminate Muslims or that Islam forbids them. Newspapers occasionally print alarmist news reports — false, health officials here say — about children who become ill from vaccines ..."

CDC/Emerging Infectious Diseases
Volume 15, Number 6—June 2009 
Religious Opposition to Polio Vaccination 
http://1.usa.gov/V5hOIj
"The local Taliban have issued fatwas denouncing vaccination as an American ploy to sterilize Muslim populations. Another common superstition spread by extremists is that vaccination is an attempt to avert the will of Allah. The Taliban have assassinated vaccination officials, including Abdul Ghani Marwat, who was the head of the government's vaccination campaign in Bajaur Agency in the Pakistani tribal areas, on his way back from meeting a religious cleric (5)..."

Taliban blocks UN polio treatment in Pakistan (telegraph, March 27, 2009) 
http://bit.ly/32akmh
"Miliants in northern Pakistan have triggered a medical emergency by refusing to allow health officials to conduct a polio vaccination campaign.  Taliban militants in the former tourist destination of Swat Valley have obstructed officials from vaccinating over 300,000 children ... Extremist clerics have used mosque loudspeakers and illegal radio stations to spread the idea that the vaccinations cause infertility and are part of a US-sponsored anti-Muslim plot."

Polio boycott is 'unforgivable' (BBC, Feb 26, 2004)
http://bbc.in/13hts4y
"A senior United Nations official has condemned Nigerian states that have refused to take part in a mass immunisation drive against polio. "It is unforgivable to allow still more children to be paralysed because of... baseless rumours," said UN Children's Fund head Carol Bellamy.  Some Muslim clerics say the vaccine is a western plot to make women infertile. The governor of one of the boycotting states has said the spread of the disease was "a lesser evil".  "It is a lesser of two evils to sacrifice two, three, four, five, even 10 children (to polio) than allow hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of girl-children likely to be rendered infertile," Kano state Governor Ibrahim Shekarau told the AP news agency...."

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