ROP AT Work. Taliban Assassinate Five Female Polio Workers

[waltky]

New strain of polio found in Pakistan...

Pakistani City Launches New Polio Campaign After Rare Strain Found
January 02, 2017 — Pakistan began a special five-day polio immunization campaign in the southwestern city of Quetta on Monday for children under five after a rare strain of the virus was found in sewage samples, officials said.

Local officials said they had recruited Muslim clerics to promote the immunizations for 400,000 children after past programs were met with resistance and even violence by extremists. “The religious leaders were ... asking the people to give their children anti-polio drops in their sermons in the mosques in rural areas of Baluchistan," said Syed Faisal Ahmed, coordinator of the local Emergency Operation Center. Pakistan is one of just three countries in the world, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, that have endemic polio, a once-common childhood virus that can cause paralysis or death.

A girl receives polio vaccine drops from a vaccination worker outside her family's home in Quetta, Pakistan​

Last year, Pakistan reported a record low of 19 cases, Ahmed said, with only one of them in Baluchistan province, of which Quetta is the capital. The new campaign follows the detection of the rare Type 2 strain of polio in sewage samples taken by the World Health Organization in November, Ahmed said. The WHO reported the findings last week. No cases of the Type 2 strain have been reported in humans in Quetta but it has been added to the vaccine as a precaution. The more common type of polio is Type 1, with no human cases of Type 2 reported for more than a decade. “We have achieved major goals in combating polio disease, but still we have to strive more to declare Pakistan a polio-free country,” Ahmed said.

Vaccination workers give a boy polio vaccine drops on a street in Quetta, Pakistan

Immunization efforts have in the past been hampered by Islamist militants. Last January, a suicide bomber killed 15 people outside a vaccination center in Quetta in an attack claimed by the Pakistani Taliban and another militant group, Jundullah. Militants in Pakistan have previously alleged the immunization campaigns are a cover for Western spies. The doctor believed to have helped the CIA track down the deceased al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden — architect of the 2001 attacks on the United States — has been accused of using a fake vaccination campaign to collect DNA samples.

Pakistani City Launches New Polio Campaign After Rare Strain Found[/CENTER]

 

[waltky]

UN pleads with ignorant Taliban to allow polio vaccinations to go forward...

UN Urges Afghan Warring Sides to Facilitate Crucial Anti-Polio Drive
December 17, 2017 — The United Nations is calling on all parties in the Afghan conflict to facilitate health workers in conducting Monday’s urgent polio vaccination campaign in a volatile southern district with the highest number of polio virus cases of any district in the world.

U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator Toby Lanzer warned Sunday the situation in Shahwalikot district in Kandahar province puts hundreds of thousands of children at risk. He said a polio vaccination campaign throughout the district is more urgent than ever Afghan officials last week reported a new case of wild polio virus, raising the number of cases in Kandahar to five and the nationwide total to 12 in 2017.

Afghan authorities with support from UNICEF and WHO are to vaccinate thousands of children in Shahwalikot starting Monday. “The outbreak of polio in Shahwalikot means that Afghanistan remains one of only three countries in the world that is still polio-endemic and polio eradication is at risk globally,” Lanzer noted. “I call on the authorities and all people with influence, including the leaders of the communities in Shahwalikot, to ensure that this polio vaccination campaign takes place by helping health workers, facilitating their task and protecting them and their supplies so that all children are protected against polio.”

A child receives a polio vaccination during an anti-polio campaign on the outskirts of Jalalabad​

Shahwalikot has been the scene of deadly clashes between Afghan security forces and Taliban insurgents. Southern Afghan provinces, including Kandahar, have been hub of insurgent activities. Lanzer said that International humanitarian law stipulates clear responsibilities for all warring sides to facilitate the anti-polio drive. “Together, with the support of all actors on the ground, we can help Afghans rid themselves once and for all of this terrible disease,” emphasized the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator.

Afghanistan and Pakistan officially are now the only two nations across the globe to have reported wild polio virus cases so far this year, though the numbers of cases have dipped to historic lows. Pakistani authorities have reported six cases so far in 2017. Nigeria is the third country in the world with ongoing wild polio-virus transmission, but so far this year no new cases have been reported.

UN Urges Afghan Warring Sides to Facilitate Crucial Anti-Polio Drive

 

[waltky]

Jihadis attack polio vaccination team in Pakistan...

Attack on polio vaccination team in Pakistan kills 3
Sunday, March 18, 2018 — Militants have ambushed a polio vaccination team in a remote tribal region in Pakistan, killing two of the medical workers and seriously wounding another two, officials said Sunday.

The gunmen also attacked tribal police and the paramilitary Frontier Corps when they responded to the attack late Saturday, killing one paramilitary and wounding another. Polio workers have come under attack on several occasions since it was revealed that the CIA used a polio vaccination campaign as a ruse to get information on Osama bin Laden, who was killed by U.S. commandos in Pakistan in 2011.Those revelations fed into claims by Islamic extremists that the vaccinations are part of a Western plot against Muslims. Pakistan is one of the only countries in the world where polio is still endemic, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria.

In Pakistan, at least nine people have been killed and dozens more hurt in an attack on an agriculture college. Gunmen wearing burqas stormed the campus on Friday morning. Police say they arrived in an auto-rickshaw and shot a guard before entering. The incident occured at the Agriculture Training Institute in the northern city of Peshawar. A wounded student, Ahteshan ul-Haq, told Reuters the university hostel usually houses nearly 400 students, but most had gone home for a long holiday weekend and only about 120 students remained. The siege ended after two hours when police and army troops killed all the gunmen. The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility saying it was targeting a military safe house. In December 2014, Pakistani Taliban gunmen killed 134 children at Peshawar's Army Public School, one of the single deadliest attacks in the country's history. The Pakistani Taliban are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law. They are loosely allied with the Afghan Taliban insurgents who ruled most of Afghanistan until they were overthrown by U.S.-backed military action in 2001.

An official in Pakistan's restive Mohmand Agency, Younus Khan, said two workers from the seven-member polio vaccination team went missing after the attack but later returned unharmed. He says security forces are still searching for the attackers. Jamaatul Ahrar, a faction of the Pakistani Taliban, claimed the attack. Khan said the bodies of the anti-polio workers were handed over to relatives and their funeral will take place later in the day. Provincial Governor Iqbal Zafar Jhagra condemned the attack, calling the polio workers "heroes."

Attack on polio vaccination team in Pakistan kills 3

 

[badger2]

It's not a new strain of wild polio, but a vaccine revertant. No wonder Taliban is tweaking.