In 2007 parents of some 24,000 children in Pakistan refused to give their children immunizations after a radical Muslim clergy opposed the local polio vaccine plan.
Also in 2007, a Pakistani health official in charge of the campaign to inoculate children against polio was killed in a bomb blast, following rumors the vaccination was a US plot to sterilize them.(AFP/File/Ali Arif)
Thanks to regional paranoia to vaccinations, each year 400,000 new cases of TB are reported in Pakistan.
Now this…
Five female health workers involved in administering the polio vaccine were murdered in Pakistan this week.
CS Monitor reported:
Five female health workers involved in Pakistan’s polio eradication efforts were gunned down Tuesday in two of the country’s main cities amid militant resistance to immunization campaigns.
Unidentified gunmen killed four of the women in Karachi and a fifth in Peshawar. Two male volunteers were also injured in Tuesday’s attacks, according to Sindh’s health department. As a result, an ongoing polio vaccination campaign has been suspended throughout Sindh Province, according to the department.
Tuesday’s violence highlights a new trend of deadly attacks targeting women, who had previously been avoided unless they were members of religious minorities, says Jameel Yusuf, the former head of Karachi’s Citizens-Police Liaison Committee.
Earlier this year the Taliban shot a UN Polio doctor and his driver in Karachi.
