Vaccines

TANK: The kidnappers set free the six employees of the World Health Organisation who had been kidnapped from the Pang area on February 17, an official said on Wednesday. Assistant Political Agent, Frontier Region Tank, Nasir Khan, told reporters that the anti-polio team, including Dr Khandad, in-charge of the Union Council Siddiqullah, driver Kalim, three Levies personnel — Lance Naik Daulat Khan, Sepoy Amanullah and Sepoy Minhas — had left for the Pang area at 8 am to administer the anti-polio drops to children when they were kidnapped on February 17.

These days, policeman with AK-47s don't look out of place during a polio immunization campaign in Pakistan. Neither do elite counterterrorism forces staffing impromptu neighborhood checkpoints, while health workers conduct vaccination drives. On a February weekend in Karachi, camouflaged paramilitary soldiers cordoned off a neighborhood known as Gadap Town, shut down two lanes of traffic, and refused entry to all non-residents. Motorbikes were temporarily banned, because of the frequency with which militants use them in drive-by shootings.

New shots are jeopardizing humanity’s battle to eradicate polio, and they don't include syringes or vaccines. Rather, they’re the gunshots of Islamic terrorists. The fight to eliminate polio is now imperiled, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), by “insecurity, targeted attacks on health workers and/or a ban by local authorities on polio immunization,” and violence in the Middle East. In a March 2014 report, the organization warned that the virus, which existed in only three countries at the dawn of 2012, is now returning to places from which it had been eradicated, and “risk of further international spread remains high, particularly in central Africa (especially from Cameroon), the Middle East, and the Horn of Africa.”

The unusual night-time kidnapping and brutal murder of a female polio vaccinator in the troubled Pakistani city of Peshawar has heightened fears among health workers struggling to stamp out the virus in the face of violent opposition from militant groups. The body of Salma Farooqi, a 30-year-old who had been involved for years in Peshawar’s battle against polio, was recovered from a field 4km (2.5 miles) from her home on Monday, a day after armed men stormed her house, tied up family members and took her away.

Marie Durling of World Vision presented the following statement to the Executive Board of the World Health Organization on January 25 in Geneva: Statement from World Vision on item 13.2M, WHO’s response, and role as the health cluster lead, in meeting the growing demands of health in humanitarian emergencies (resolution WHA 65.20).