Upshot of attacks: UN agencies suspend anti-polio campaign

Woman vaccinator, driver killed in Charsadda.

SHABQADAR/ PESHAWAR:

Violence has blighted every day of the three-day polio vaccination campaign so far.

Attacks on fieldworkers continued unabated as gunmen targeted more vaccinators on Wednesday – taking the three-day death toll to eight and prompting Unicef and World Health Organisation (WHO) to suspend the countrywide campaign.

In the latest attack, a female health worker and her driver were shot dead in the Shabqadar tehsil of Charsadda district, police officer Saeed Khan told The Express Tribune.

Zakia Bibi, 35, and Ayaz, 36, were shot dead as they stepped out of a home during door-to-door vaccination activities in the Tarkha area of Shabqadar, located approximately 20 kilometres from Peshawar. “The two were killed on the spot,” Khan said. Health authorities suspended the campaign soon after the attack.

In an earlier incident on Wednesday, another polio worker was shot and critically wounded on the outskirts of Peshawar.

Hilal, 22, was shot by two gunmen in the Sherojangai area. He was rushed to the Lady Reading Hospital, where he was initially reported dead, but later medics said he was on life support.

“Medically, he is dead but we have put him on a mechanical ventilator. This is our last try for his life but he is not responding,” Abdul Qadir, neurosurgeon at the intensive care unit of LHR, told AFP.

Four other women health workers were shot at but not hit in Nowshera district, said Jan Baz Afridi, deputy head of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation. Two fieldworkers were shot at in the Dwasaro village of Charsadda district.

Alarmed by the upsurge in attacks, President Asif Ali Zardari directed the interior ministry to ensure the safety of all polio workers. In a meeting held at the CM House in Karachi, the president directed Interior Minister Rehman Malik to bring the perpetrators of attacks on vaccinators to justice.

UN suspends campaign

The spate of attacks prompted Unicef and the WHO to suspend work on polio campaigns across Pakistan.

Unicef spokesperson Michael Coleman said the two organisations have halted work in Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa after Tuesday’s attacks but had now extended the suspension nationwide – pulling all staff involved in the campaign off the streets.

Senior coordinator for polio eradication at the WHO Dr Elias Durry told Express News that the organisation would be taking “extra precautions” to ensure the safety of workers before resuming the campaign.

The two agencies, however, joined the government and people of Pakistan in condemning the multiple attacks on polio workers. “Those killed or injured, many of whom are women, are among hundreds of thousands of heroes who work selflessly to eradicate polio,” they said in a joint statement.

The Lady Health Workers Association (LHWA) also boycotted the campaign and pulled 110,000 of its workers from the campaign.  “We will resume our duties when we get security; we cannot work in such an insecure environment,” LHW President Rukhsana Anwar told The Express Tribune.

Caught off guard

The government was caught off guard by the violence, saying they had not expected attacks in areas far from Taliban strongholds and that they would have to change tactics in the campaign.

“We didn’t expect such attacks in Karachi,” said Minister for Human Rights Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, who oversees the polio campaign.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have repeatedly threatened fieldworkers involved in the campaign. Some said they received calls telling them to stop working with “infidels” just before the attacks. But TTP spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told Reuters his group was not involved in the violence.

Khokhar said the drive would resume as soon as security was in place.  “The teams go into every little neighbourhood. You can understand that enormous resources are needed if we have to protect each and every team and worker, which we will have to now,” he said.

(WITH ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY RIAZ AHMED IN PESHAWAR, SEHRISH WASIF IN ISLAMABAD AND AFP)

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20^th, 2012.