Polio worker killed in Chaman, teams attacked in Sindh and Balochistan

KARACHI/QUETTA: Polio eradication teams were attacked in Sindh and Balochistan on Thursday while a female polio worker was shot and killed in Chaman, police said.

According to police, two men on a motorcycle attacked a polio team in Chaman’s Sultanzai area, which resulted in Nasreen, a 35-year-old polio worker being killed.

Police added, another polio worker, 24-year-old Rashida was seriously wounded in the attack. She was shifted to a hospital in Quetta for immediate treatment.

Polio campaign was temporary suspended in Sultanzai while police have launched a search operation in the area.

In Nowshera, a man refused the drops for his children and threw the polio eradication team out of the house. 

Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a crippling childhood disease caused by the polio virus and preventable through immunisation. Affecting mostly children under the age of five, polio — which has no cure and can only be prevented by giving a child multiple vaccine doses — can lead to irreversible paralysis.

Country-wide anti-polio eradication as launched in the country on April 23. 

The country continues to battle polio for the past several years and is close to completely eradicating the disease. The number of cases declined from 306 in 2014 to 54 in 2015, 20 in 2016 and eight in 2017. In 2018, 12 cases were reported.

A country must have no cases for three consecutive years in order to be considered to have eradicated polio by the World Health Organisation.