Pakistani Polio Volunteers Shot By Taliban

Pakistani Polio Volunteers Shot By Taliban

Five women who were working for a UN backed polio vaccination campaign in two towns in Pakistan were shot dead this Tuesday.

With Pakistan being one of only three countries were polio is endemic, serious efforts are necessary to help the situation improve.

One of the biggest problems in Pakistan is that radical Muslims and militants consider health workers and UN volunteers to be spies for the U.S., a situation that often has serious repercussions.

Taliban opposition to the vaccination campaign started last year when it was discovered that a doctor ran a fake vaccination clinic to help the CIA track down Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

The murdered women, three of which were teenagers, appeared to be shot in the head at very close range. Out of the five women, four were killed in Karachi, and the fifth while doing house calls in a city near Karachi in the North West.

The attacks were carefully planned as the time frame for all the murders was about 15 minutes.As a result of these attacks the vaccination campaign in Karachi was suspended prematurely. The campaign started this Monday and was planned to run until Wednesday. Another polio vaccination campaign was stopped this July after similar incidents took place in the city of Karachi, Pakistan.

Posted by James Fried on Thursday December 20 2012, 1:42 AM EST. Ref: Washington Post. Link. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under World. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0