Three polio workers abducted in Tank as attacks on vaccination teams continue
A health worker vaccinates a child during a polio campaign in rural Pakistan (file photo)
TANK: Three polio vaccination workers were abducted by unidentified gunmen in Tank district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, on Tuesday, in the latest attack on the teams carrying out Pakistan’s immunisation drive. Police identified the three as Mir Janan, Ikram and Khanzala. They were taken from the Sorghar area and moved to an undisclosed location, the Tank district administration confirmed.
It is the third major attack on polio teams in the province in just over a week. Last Tuesday, two policemen guarding a vaccination team were shot dead in Mohmand district, and a third was wounded. A day earlier, four polio workers had been seized in Tank itself, in the Sheikh Attar area; Governor Faisal Karim Kundi took notice of that abduction and ordered the authorities to act at once for their safe recovery.
A campaign under fire
In September, two policemen protecting polio workers were killed in Noshki, Balochistan. The attacks have come as a sub-national drive launched on 2 November tries to reach nearly 24 million children under five across 97 high-risk districts, with more than 200,000 workers going door to door.
One of two countries where polio survives
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where wild poliovirus is still endemic. The National Emergency Operations Centre had confirmed eight cases in Pakistan this year, six of them in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, before this week’s attacks. The abductors in today’s incident have not been identified.
