On December 20, 2024, two Policemen and two polio workers sustained injuries when a polio team was attacked by a mob in the Korangi town of Karachi, the provincial capital of Sindh.
On December 17, 2024, three Security Force (SF) personnel were killed and another three personnel sustained injuries as a military vehicle deployed for the protection of polio teams was targeted by an improvised explosive device (IED) in the Draban area of Dera Ismail Khan District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).
On December 17, 2024, two terrorists were killed in retaliatory firing by SFs, when a group of militants attacked a polio vaccination team in the Kot Mubarak area of Dera Ghazi Khan District, Punjab. The militants launched the attack on the vaccination team, which was being escorted by the Police. The Police swiftly responded and moved the polio team to safety, while engaging in a firefight with the terrorists. A patrolling unit of the Pakistan Rangers (Punjab) and local Police arrived at the scene, countering the assault, resulting in an exchange of fire for approximately 40 minutes. The two terrorists were neutralised, and a rocket launcher, hand grenades, detonators, firearms, and a walkie-talkie were recovered.
On December 16, 2024, a Police Constable, Irfan, was killed while a polio worker sustained injuries when a polio vaccination team came under attack by unknown assailants on motorcycles in the Shakar Khel area of Banda Daud Shah in the Karak District of KP.
On December 7, 2024, terrorists assaulted and issued death threats to a polio worker in the Jamrud tehsil (revenue unit) of Khyber District in KP, asking him to stop what they declared was ‘improper activity’. Mirzali Khan, the operational officer for the Polio Initiative Programme in the Ghundi Union Council disclosed that, after he left home in the Gudar area at around 9pm, for the Jamrud Civil Hospital, two masked men on a motorcycle intercepted him and threatened to shoot him in the head if he continued to administer polio drops to children.
These three attacks came against the backdrop of the nationwide anti-polio vaccination drive which commenced on December 15, 2024, targeting around 44 million children across the country. Pakistan has reported a significant surge in poliovirus infections in 2024, with 67 cases reported so far (data till December 29, 2024), compared to only six cases in 2023. Of these, 27 are from Balochistan, 19 each from KP and Sindh, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif launched the vaccination campaign, which will continue till December 22. “Polio is a dangerous disease which can cripple your children for life. In fact, it can be life-threatening,” Sharif said at the campaign launch, “Only two drops [of anti-polio vaccine] can save your children from being disabled forever. Come and let’s protect the future of our and the nation’s children.”
During the drive, polio vaccinators go house to house in 143 Districts to immunize children under the age of five. A target has been set to vaccinate 23.3 million children in Punjab’s 36 Districts, 7.2 million in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s 36 Districts, 10.6 million in Sindh’s 30 Districts and 2.6 million in Balochistan’s 36 Districts. Additionally, more than 800,000 children will be vaccinated in the five Districts of Islamabad, Pakistan Administered Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.
Each launch of the polio drive in Pakistan has inevitably seen incidents of attack targeting people associated with polio vaccination, polio vaccination or SF teams giving protecting them. According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), at least 20 Policemen, seven militants and three Polio workers have been killed in 31 incidents of attack in 2024, till date (data till December 29, 2024). Another 53 persons, including 20 Policemen, have sustained injuries during this period.
In one of the most high-profile attacks of the current year, Dr Abdul Rehman, the Bajaur District coordinator of the polio immunisation programme, was killed and a Policeman sustained injuries on January 19, after unidentified assailants opened fire on a vehicle in the Tarkhoo area of the Mamond tehsil in the Bajaur District of KP. The Station House Officer (SHO) of the Mamond Police Station, Dilawar Khan, disclosed that unidentified assailants opened fire on Dr Abdul Rehman’s vehicle when he was returning from the District Headquarters Hospital in Khar.
The first polio immunisation-linked incident of violence recorded by the SATP database was reported on July 20, 2012, when unidentified terrorists shot dead Doctor Ishaq, associated with the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Polio Prevention Campaign, at Al-Asif Square in Junejo Town, Karachi. The Polio immunisation programme in Pakistan has been under escalating threat from Islamist terrorists since the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reportedly organised a fake vaccination drive by Doctor Shakeel Afridi, to track down the then Al-Qaeda chief, Osama Bin Laden, who was killed at Abbottabad, KP, by United States SEALs in the intervening night of May 1-2, 2011. However, polio vaccination has historically been resisted by fundamentalist and extremist elements in Pakistan, and Polio vaccination was suspended for three years between 2009-2012, due to the hostility of extremist elements. Terrorists and extremists also spread vicious propaganda against the vaccination campaigns, including the canard that the vaccination drops were part of a western plot to sterilise Muslims.
Since the first attack on Polio workers in 2012 recorded in the partial data compiled by SATP, at least 167 persons (98 Policemen, 62 health workers and seven terrorists) have been killed in such violence (data till December 29, 2024). Another 139 persons (91 health workers and 48 policemen) have been injured in such violence.
According to a January 9, 2024, Dawn report, in KP province alone, 106 people have been killed in polio-related incidents since 2012. The report puts the number of injured Policemen and polio workers at 162 during this period. A total of 13 people has been kidnapped during vaccination drives. Vaccinators have fallen to bullets of unidentified assailants for long, but not as aggressively as they have been since 2012. 2014 recorded 17 killings, the highest for any year since 2012. In each of 2013 and 2016, terrorists killed 13 people during such drives. According to the Dawn report, Peshawar has recorded 23 such killings since 2012; Charsadda, 12; Swabi and Dera Ismail Khan, 10 each; Bannu, nine; Bajaur, seven; Mardan six; Tank, five; Mansehra and North Waziristan, four each; Bannu and Buner, three each; Lower Dir, Swat and Khyber, two each; and one person each was killed during anti-polio campaigns in South Waziristan, Nowshera, Kurram and Lakki Marwat.
Pakistan is one of just two remaining countries in the world where polio is still categorized as ‘endemic’, the other being Afghanistan. The current year has registered an alarming rise, with 67 Polio case as of December 29, 2024, from just six cases in 2023. Twenty cases were detected in the country in 2022, one in 2021, and 84 in 2020.
Since 1994, the Pakistan Polio Eradication Programme has been implemented by up to 339,521 trained and dedicated polio workers, the largest surveillance network in the world. The Government provides security to the vaccination teams. However, terrorists continue to hunt down both polio workers as well as their security teams. On September 11, 2024, the Bajaur District Police announced a boycott of duties on the Anti-Polio Campaigns because of the Police being consistently targeted and killed while protecting the polio eradication teams. The announcement was made in a video clip by scores of Policemen. The 50-second clip shows several Policemen gathered at the Police Lines in Khar, announcing their decision to boycott the vaccination drive in protest. The Policemen from another two Southern Districts of KP, Lakki Marwat and Bannu, were already protesting since September 9 against the targeted killing of Policemen. However, the protest and sit-in came to an end on September 14, after the mediation efforts by the Assistant Commissioner and tribal elders of respective Districts.
Not just SFs, parents are also afraid to get their children vaccinated due to the fear of Islamist terrorists, as well as due to their own blind belief. To deal with this, the Government of Pakistan has been considering a law to fine and imprison parents who refuse to get their children vaccinated. On August 25, 2023, the Sindh Governor signed the Sindh Immunization and Epidemics Control Bill 2023, under Section (1) of which the concerned deputy commissioner (DC) has been given powers to impose penalties. The accused parents can face a one-month jail term and PKR 50,000 in fines. According to an April 13, 2024, Pakistan Today report, over 63,000 parents across Pakistan refused to vaccinate their children during the second phase of the national anti-polio drive in 2024. The breakdown of the refusal rates by province was: 38,749 in Sindh, followed by 20,392 in KP; 4,081 in Balochistan; 175 in Punjab; 75 in Islamabad; and 24 in Pakistan Administered Kashmir.
Despite robust security framework and arrangements around vaccination campaigns, periodic attacks on people associated with the anti-polio programme remain a major issue for the Pakistani state and establishment.
