Thousands of polio workers in Punjab, mostly women, are still working without police escorts with a fresh attack on teams in Multan exposing the government’s “indifference” despite incidents of gruesome killings of vaccinators in Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
After attacks on polio teams in Karachi, Peshawar and Charsadda, Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters that the government had given directions to polio teams to get police security before heading out on vaccination drives, which the victims apparently had not followed.
On Thursday, two female polio workers had to rush for cover to save their lives when unidentified men opened fire on them in Shah Faisal Colony in Multan district.
Lady health workers (LHWs) Khalida and Aasia remained unhurt in the incident that occurred in Shah Rukn-e-Alam police precincts.
Multan SSP Operations Gohar Nafees confirmed the incident, saying the attackers would soon be arrested.
However, he said the incident could not be linked to firing incidents targeting polio workers in Karachi and parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that had resulted in killings of polio workers.
The three-day polio drive concluded on Wednesday (December 19), however, the two LHWs went to the residence of Ameer Khan Pathan to vaccinate his kids against polio on Thursday, a day reserved to immunise left out children.
The SSP said there might be a possibility that LHWs were not targeted and it was an incident of aerial firing probably meant to scare them away.
Statements of the two workers were being recorded for legal action against the accused, he added.
Sources in the Health Department told Pakistan Today that a polio team working in Samanabad area of Lahore had received threats on Wednesday, prompting the ‘demoralised’ lady health workers (LHWs) to go on a strike but they were later lured back to work.
Unfortunately Pakistan, with 56 cases of polio so far, remains one of the three countries in the world where this preventable virus still occurs, the other two being Afghanistan and Nigeria. India despite having a huge population, completely eradicated the virus last year.
International agencies have already warned that if the country fails to curb polio by June next year, international embargo will follow. According to the district health authorities, in Lahore alone, around 6,000 individuals, around half of them women, are participating in the drive. The government has decided to have one female member in each team and they mostly include LHWs, officials from the education, revenue and other government departments.
Lahore Health EDO Inamul Haq said the polio teams, especially females, feel threatened after the killings. “The parents don’t feel like sending their girls on the drive because of the obvious threat, but we have motivated them. The incidents of threat by unidentified men in Samanabad also took place, but threats and refusals cannot diminish our resolve to eradicate polio,” he said.
Talking to Pakistan Today, Punjab government spokesman Senator Pervaiz Rashid said, “We will give complete security to the polio teams and the Multan assailants have already been arrested,” he said.
