Parents of children being immunised in a polo vaccination drive in Bannu shot at a female polio worker after she vaccinated their children on Thursday, police said.
District Police Officer Qasim Ali Khan said that the parents of the children shot at the polio worker as she was leaving their house after vaccinating their children. The parents did not want anti-polio drops to be administered to their child.
Polio remains endemic in Pakistan after the Taliban banned vaccinations, attacks targeted medical staffers and suspicions lingered about the inoculations.
The KP provincial health department in Feb 2015 began tackling refusals by issuing arrest warrants for parents and guardians who defied vaccination of their children under the Sehat Ka Ittehad (Alliance for Health) initiative. Parents were freed after they submitted an undertaking that they would not oppose immunisation.
Following implementation of these measures, only 23,000 refusal cases were recorded in KP in Feb 2015 against the 47,000 cases in Jan 2015.
