Polio team comes under attack in Karachi

• Incident takes place in port city’s Korangi district.
• Six individuals involved in attack have been nabbed.
• Pakistan has recorded 64 polio cases this year.

KARACHI: A polio team was attacked in the port city’s Korangi district, police said on Friday, marking the latest incident of violence against workers deployed to administer life-saving drops to children.

Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan are the only countries where polio remains endemic and the vaccination teams frequently come under attack, which at times also results in the deaths of polio workers and security personnel.

According to the police, when polio workers visited a family in a locality in Korangi to administer vaccines, the family’s men and women physically attacked them and snatched their mobile phones.

Two cops were injured and the same number of polio workers also sustained injuries.

The police said that additional personnel arrived at the scene after receiving information about the incident and arrested six individuals, including four women, involved in the attack on the team.

The police further stated that the polio workers and officials, who sustained minor injuries in the attack, were shifted to the hospital for medical treatment.

“The family refused to allow their children to receive the polio vaccination and polio workers were attacked with sticks during the incident,” SSP Korangi told Geo News.

The arrested individuals have been identified as Samina, Mahjabeen, Amna, Iqra, Imran, and Sufiyan, he said.

Pakistan has seen a surge in polio cases this year, recording 64 this year compared with six in 2023, and the latest case was also recorded in Sindh, of which Karachi is the capital.

The federal government had this Monday launched a four-day campaign that aimed at covering 143 districts across the country, with over 400,000 polio workers going door-to-door aiming to immunise more than 45 million children over the age of five.

“I appeal to all parents across Pakistan to fully cooperate with the campaign, vaccinate their children against polio to protect them from this disease permanently,” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said during the campaign launch, days before the latest attack.

Polio can easily be prevented by the oral administration of a few drops of vaccine, but health workers risk their lives to save others. Scores of polio vaccination workers and their escorts have been killed over the years.