Taliban

The images of Imran Khan and other PTI men administering polio drops to children in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have been welcomed and appreciated by many. This is especially significant given that militants in the province have rejected and obstructed polio vaccinations for some years now. Also, just over this last year, the systematic murders and attacks on polio workers across the country have become as endemic as the disease.

On July 3, 2013, a female health worker was killed in northwest Pakistan while conducting polio vaccinations; she was the latest to die in an on-going anti-vaccination campaign by militants. About three weeks earlier, on June 16, militants killed two male volunteers who were administering polio vaccines in northeast Pakistan.

The Taliban has ended its war on polio vaccination workers and admitted immunisation is the only way to protect children from the disease, its leadership said in a statement issued today. The announcement comes just weeks after the Afghan government launched a new campaign to immunise more than eight million children between six months and five years old throughout the country. It said it had trained 46,000 volunteers to conduct the campaign which is funded by the American aid agency USAID, the World Health Organisation and Unicef.