Islamabad – Gunmen in Pakistan’s north-west have killed a health worker responsible for polio vaccinations, raising the total number of polio vaccination workers killed this month to five.
Pakistan has seen renewed violence against people associated with the UN-run anti-polio campaign.
The latest anti-polio campaigner to die was gunned down in the north-west Bajaur district overnight on Monday, police official Bakhat Safi said.
The killing was the fifth in a new wave of violence against vaccination workers, said Babar bin Atta, head of the polio control programme.
The recent spate of violence has prompted the majority of vaccination workers to threaten a boycott of the next vaccination drive, according to one health worker who wished not to be named.
The campaign has helped Pakistan control the spread of the disease as the number of infected children came down from 304 in 2014 to 12 in 2018.
The disease, which cripples children for life, spread in the mountainous north-west near the Afghan border.
Militants have killed hundreds of health workers and police officials guarding them because of a fear that the vaccines would make Muslim children sterile.
A series of military offensives uprooted Islamist militants from their bases to make sure vaccination workers could reach children in previously inaccessible areas.
Renewed violence in more recent days poses a serious challenge for Pakistan’s government and the military because it could see the resurgence of the disease, security analyst Fida Khan said.
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