A reader pointed me towards this story, thanks for the heads up! I appreciate the tip.
While I can’t believe it didn’t draw my attention earlier, I suppose I was distracted by first world distractions, a truly horrific scene is unfolding in Pakistan.
The front-line heroes of Pakistan’s war on polio are its volunteers: young women who tread fearlessly from door to door, in slums and highland villages, administering precious drops of vaccine to children in places where their immunization campaign is often viewed with suspicion.
Anti-vaccers never made sense to me. Sure, I wasn’t thrilled when I had to take my son in for his shots, but the vision of his contracting measles, mumps, diphtheria, whatever, always outweighed the few hours of discomfort after the event. However, what’s going on in Pakistan is far more insidious than any anti-vax campaign. We’re talking cold blooded killings.
Now, those workers have become quarry. After militants stalked and killed eight of them over the course of a three-day, nationwide vaccination drive, the United Nations suspended its anti-polio work in Pakistan on Wednesday, and one of Pakistan’s most crucial public health campaigns has been plunged into crisis.
The World Health Organization and Unicef ordered their staff members off the streets, while government officials reported that some polio volunteers — especially women — were afraid to show up for work.
While nobody is really using the word “taliban” at this point, we do have this:
Yet again, Pakistani militants are making a point of attacking women who stand for something larger. In October, it was Malala Yousafzai, a schoolgirl advocate for education who was gunned down by a Pakistani Taliban attacker in the Swat Valley. She was grievously wounded, and the militants vowed they would try again until they had killed her. The result was a tidal wave of public anger that clearly unsettled the Pakistani Taliban.
In singling out the core workers in one of Pakistan’s most crucial public health initiatives, militants seem to have resolved to harden their stance against immunization drives, and declared anew that they consider women to be legitimate targets. Until this week, vaccinators had never been targeted with such violence in such numbers.
Government officials in Peshawar said that they believe a Taliban faction in Mohmand, a tribal area near Peshawar, was behind at least some of the shootings. Still, the Pakistani Taliban have been uncharacteristically silent about the attacks, with no official claims of responsibility. In staying quiet, the militants may be trying to blunt any public backlash like the huge demonstrations over the attack on Ms. Yousafzai.
Sigh. Up until now, the vaccination drive seemed quite successful.
Faced with suspicious or recalcitrant parents, their only weapon is reassurance: a gentle pat on the hand, a shared cup of tea, an offer to seek religious assurances from a pro-vaccine cleric. “The whole program is dependent on them,” said Mr. Shah, in Peshawar. “If they do good work, and talk well to the parents, then they will vaccinate the children.”
That has happened with increasing frequency in Pakistan over the past year. A concerted immunization drive, involving up to 225,000 vaccination workers, drove the number of newly infected polio victims down to 52. Several high-profile groups shouldered the program forward — at the global level, donors like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations and Rotary International; and at the national level, President Asif Ali Zardari and his daughter Aseefa, who have made polio eradication a “personal mission.”
And how is this justified?
Mr. Fazlullah claimed that polio vaccines were part of a plot to sterilize Muslim children, but in recent years Taliban commanders in the militant hub of North Waziristan have come up with a more political complaint: they say that immunization can resume only when American drones stop killing their comrades. Suspicion of vaccination has also intensified since the C.I.A. used a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, to run a hepatitis B vaccination scheme in order to spy on Osama bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad in 2011.
Now, it seems the vaccinators are dying with more frequency then those with polio. This is an alarming situation. Hopefully reason will eventually prevail.
The anti-polio drive has tried to integrate itself so deeply into the country’s faltering public health system that an attack on vaccinators is seen not as a blow against the West, but as a blow against the lives of local women and children.
“This is not about polio,” said Dr. Bruce Aylward, who heads polio eradication at the World Health Organization. “This is someone attacking health care workers who are delivering basic interventions.”
