PESHAWAR: A polio officer from Pakistan’s northwestern Jamrud town said on Thursday that unidentified armed men recently threatened to shoot him dead if he did not stop vaccinating children, amid a surge in polio infections and attacks on vaccinators in the country.
Religiously motivated militants, including the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, have frequently launched attacks on polio vaccination teams in Pakistan in the past. These groups accuse polio vaccination teams of using inoculation campaigns to sterilize Pakistani children based on a Western conspiracy.
Two policemen guarding a polio vaccination team were killed on Oct. 29 in the northwestern Orakzai district while in another attack, a polio worker and a police constable were killed when militants attacked a polio team in northwest Pakistan’s Bajaur district on Oct. 12.
“On Dec. 7, I was on the way in Gudar area when two masked men, one of whom was carrying a pistol, intercepted and told me what I was doing was improper and I should stop it,” Mirzali Khan, the operational officer in Jamrud for Pakistan’s anti-polio program, told Arab News over the phone.
Khan said the masked men threatened to shoot him if he “continued vaccinating children,” adding that he had immediately registered a police complaint at the nearby police station.
Khan said the incident had left him depressed, saying that he wanted safety and security for his family.
Jamrud Police Station’s Station House Officer (SHO) Shah Khalid confirmed that Khan had filed a complaint over the incident.
“The details were processed to the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) for further details to look into the matter,” Khalild told Arab News.
Ihtisham Ali, adviser to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister on health, told Arab News several polio volunteers and police officials guarding them have been killed by militants during anti-polio campaigns in the past.
He said the government plays its role in ensuring the safety of polio volunteers and that their safety was the provincial government’s top priority.
“We will tackle the case with concerned authorities after investigation,” Ali said.
Pakistan, along with neighboring Afghanistan, remains the last polio-endemic country in the world. It has so far reported 59 cases of the infection this year.
Pakistan’s efforts to contain polio have been hit hard with repeated militant attacks against vaccinators and law enforcers guarding them.
The masses’ doubts regarding polio campaigns were exacerbated in 2011 when the US Central Intelligence Agency set up a fake vaccination program to gather intelligence on former Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
