Islamabad, May 29 (IANS) Frontline health workers in Pakistan continue to operate in one of the world’s most violent security environments, complicating efforts to eradicate polio from the country. They have been frequently targetted during polio vaccination campaigns. In once such attack last month, one police personnel was killed and four others injured after their vehicle escorting polio vaccinators was attacked in Hangu district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province.
“The attack captures a paradox at the heart of Pakistan’s final mile fight against polio. Pakistan is one of just two countries — the other is Afghanistan — where polio is still endemic. Fortunately, the country is closer than it has ever been to ending a disease that once paralysed thousands of Pakistani children every year. Yet frontline health workers are operating inside one of the world’s most violent security environments, complicating efforts to reach the finish line,” Manal Fatima, an Assistant Director at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and Michael Kugelman, a resident senior fellow for South Asia at the Atlantic Council, wrote in a report in Atlantic Council.
On May 24, a police official deployed with the polio vaccination team was seriously injured in a firing incident near Ishaqzai Qila area of Chaman district in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. However, the members of the polio team remained safe, Pakistan’s daily Dawn reported. The injured police personnel was taken to hospital for treatment.
On May 18, at least two police personnel escorting polio vaccination teams were killed in separate incidents in Bajaur district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Unidentified assailants attacked the polio vaccination teams in Tabbai and Dag Qila regions of Salarzai, Pakistan-based Geo News reported, citing a senior police official.
“Recent years have brought a surge in cross-border militancy, including the resurgence of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an al-Qaeda-allied group that in an earlier era was responsible for thousands of attacks across Pakistan. These included multiple assaults on polio workers and their security details that killed nearly sixty people from 2012 to 2014. How Pakistan navigates this paradox this year will shape the outcome of a thirty-year global eradication effort. If the eradication campaign falters, wild poliovirus cases could rise in Pakistan and Afghanistan, squandering years of progress and risking transmission beyond the region,” the writers mentioned.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative has said that six poliovirus cases have been reported across the world so far in 2026, all in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan reported 74 polio cases in 2024, showcasing more than a ten-fold rise from just six in 2023. Polio vaccination campaigns in Pakistan have helped to bring the total number of polio cases to 30 in 2025. So far in 2026, Pakistan has reported three new cases of polio.
“Mapping Pakistan’s polio landscape against its biggest hotspots for terrorist violence yields an unsettling fact: The geography is nearly identical. The majority of attacks are concentrated in KPK and Balochistan provinces. Those same two provinces continue to host persistent reservoirs of wild poliovirus, accounting for the bulk of Pakistan’s recent caseload, including both KPK cases confirmed so far in 2026. Vaccinators have become the biggest casualty of this geographic overlap,” the Atlantic Council report stated.
Pakistani officials have said that over 200 polio workers and police escorts have been killed since the 1990s. As many as 96 deaths and 170 injuries have been reported from attacks on polio campaigns, including 61 police officers and 27 health workers, with the TTP and affiliated Islamist militant factions responsible for the majority of the attacks, according to the government data tracked since 2012.
–IANS
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