Vaccination

So far in 2014, there have been 20 attacks on polio workers in Pakistan that have killed 32 people, according to data I collected using news reports; and the attacks are only escalating in lethality and violence. In 2013, there were 29 attacks against polio workers, killing 22 people; and in 2012, there were only nine attacks that resulted in the deaths of 10 people.

BANNU: Unidentified armed men attempted to kidnap two female polio workers in Howaid area of Bannu on Wednesday before letting them go with a warning. The workers were let go after the mediation of locals but with the warning that they would be killed if seen vaccinating children in the area again. An official of the Howaid police station, Fidaullah Wazir, said Taj Bibi and Gohar Taj complained to the police that they were immunising children in Mamakhel when three armed men approached them.

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.

Few telephone calls can be as portentous as the one Mumtaz Begum, 35, received on 15 March 2011. At the time, it sounded like just another call from a supervisor to a health worker inviting her to a meeting the next morning about a forthcoming vaccination campaign. As it turned out, Ms Begum and 16 other lady health workers (LHWs), as they are known locally, were to become pawns in the hunt for the world's most wanted man, Osama Bin Laden. They have since been living under constant fear of attacks, have been called traitors by some and have lost their jobs.