Pakistan: Sindh health sec says polio campaign shall resume, health workers refuse

The Express Tribune

Sindh health secretary Iqbal Durrani said that a security plan has been made for the protection of polio workers in the province, Express News reported on Wednesday.

He added that the polio immunisation drive will restart in Sindh on January 23 if polio workers are provided with appropriate security.

Polio workers refuted his claim, adding that the drive will not restart tomorrow under any circumstances. A female polio worker, Saba Saeed, said that Rs250 per day is not sufficient incentive for them to risk their lives. On January 21, four polio workers were killed and two injured in separate incidents in Karachi and Mansehra. Authorities had suspended the polio immunisation drive in District East and the Korangi District of Karachi after the attack. In Karachi’s Qayyumabad, assailants had opened fire on teams on the second day of a three-day polio campaign, killing two female polio workers along with a male colleague and injuring two others.

In the Mansehra incident, a schoolteacher engaged in a polio vaccination campaign was gunned down in a remote village of Oghi Tehsil.

In a third incident in Balochistan’s Panjgur district on the same day, armed men had snatched an official vehicle, mobile phones and polio vaccines from a polio team. According to police, the polio team was part of a door-to-door campaign to administer polio drops to children, when armed men took away their vehicle and other belongings at the Bantistan area. The police registered a case.