ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The United Nations suspended all polio-related field activities in Pakistan on Wednesday after more attacks on public health workers attempting to immunize children. Two two people were killed and another wounded around the northwestern city of Peshawar.
The shootings followed a day of violence on Tuesday in the port city of Karachi in which four female health workers were killed. The attacks Wednesday brought the death toll from the three-day polio immunization campaign to eight people, most of them women.
The World Health Organization and Unicef ordered their staff members off the streets in response to the latest shootings, although some provincial governments continued to immunize children.
The shootings represent the most direct assault yet on an urgently needed public health program in one of the world’s last remaining reservoirs of the polio virus. Pakistan is one of three countries were polio remains endemic — the others are Nigeria and Afghanistan — and it has made strong progress against the disease following a disastrous rate of infection last year.
So far in 2012, officials say, Pakistan has recorded 56 new polio cases, compared with 192 at the same point in 2011. The turnaround is due to a series of nationwide immunization drives targeting children under 5, which can involve up to 225,000 public health workers.
But the unprecedented series of attacks targeting female health workers in recent days threatens to hinder future immunization efforts.
The attacks Wednesday were concentrated in the districts around Peshawar. North of the city, a gunman riding a motorcycle killed a female health worker and her driver. Another driver was seriously wounded in a second incident close to the city center. And in Nowshera, east of Peshawar, four female health workers reported being shot at but not hit.
A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban denied responsibility for the attacks, although the insurgents have a history of threatening polio eradication programs, claiming they are a cover for American espionage activities.
But the police in Peshawar said that Taliban fighters based in Mohmand tribal agency, north of Peshawar, were involved in at least two of the attacks in the Peshawar area.
One woman who came under fire described the attack, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “Two people were riding a motorbike,” she said. “The one wearing a mask pulled out a gun and fired four shots. We shouted. The bullets whizzed past us but luckily we were safe.”
The Taliban’s suspicions about vaccination workers were aggravated by the case of Shakil Afridi, a doctor from the tribal areas who was paid by the Central Intelligence Agency to run a bogus hepatitis vaccination campaign near Osama bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad in the run-up to the May 2011 American commando raid that killed the Qaeda leader.
But the Taliban have also used the polio campaign — a rare attempt by the government to extend its authority into the tribal belt — for raw political purposes. In North Waziristan, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a major Taliban-affiliated warlord, has banned polio vaccination until America halts drone strikes in the area.
In contrast, the Taliban in Afghanistan have taken a more enlightened approach to polio vaccination, in some cases actively sponsoring the campaign, said Shahnaz Wazir Ali, a senior Pakistani polio official.
“What’s happening here is much, much more sinister,” she said. “And it’s happening right in the heart of our cities.”
Vaccination rounds in Pakistan take place many times each year, with teams of health workers visiting homes and public spaces to deliver polio immunization drops to children under 5.
The three-day vaccination round under way this week, which began on Monday, targeted parts of the country worst hit by the virus — the northwest, the tribal belt, and Karachi — and was due to involve an estimated 135,000 health workers, according to the government.
The lower house of Parliament adopted a unanimous resolution Wednesday condemning the attacks on polio campaign volunteers.
“We cannot and would not allow polio to wreak havoc on the lives of our children,” Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf said on Tuesday.
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