In an upsurge of reprehensible attacks on the health workers engaged in saving children from succumbing to the crippling disease of polio, Pakistan has lost no less than eight of these workers, including five women, in a matter of just two days, Tuesday and Wednesday. Indefensible by any standard, the murder of polio workers is, though, not new to the country.
In this shameful exercise, Pakistan is in the unenviable company of two other countries, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Helpless in the situation where the local authorities have failed to provide protection to the polio paramedics, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has temporarily suspended the anti-polio drive it is sponsoring in Pakistan. One cannot blame the WHO or any other UN agency carrying out projects for the good of the people for suspending or even winding up their programmes, if the staff implementing them remains exposed to danger in the very country they are trying to help. The government, as usual, is finding itself at its wits’ end, rather than thinking up ways to provide security to these humanitarian aides so that the noble programme could continue without fear of their lives and Pakistan could saves itself from global ignominy. One such measure could be for the ministers and other political figures to surrender the huge paraphernalia of security assigned them and post them with the polio workers.
The identification of Osama bin Laden by a medical team whose mission was given out to be administering polio drops to children, conspiracy theorists found easy victims for the propaganda that that under cover of a humanitarian task, these workers were “foreign agents”.  Retrogressive forces exploited the opportunity to inject the fear of infertility. A sad aspect of the story is that not much has been done to counter this harmful propaganda. Now, in the aftermath of these deadly attacks, Pakistanis also face the grim prospect of a ban on travel abroad.
Undoubtedly, the dream of seeing Pakistan polio-free is meeting with a serious setback. A possible fallout, with reverberations beyond the borders, is that China that had become polio-free back in 1999 is now reporting cases again, which could be attributed to the transmission of the virus from Pakistan. It is time to wake up and defeat the forces of ignorance that want to drive us back to the Dark Ages. We should be grateful to modern science for making available to us means to prevent the occurrence of such dreadful diseases. There should be no let-up in providing the maximum security possible to the paramedic staff administering polio to the children. At the same time, one expects the government to realise that it cannot deal with these fanatical militants with kid gloves; and an aggressive plan using both strong arms and long-term moves to change the mindset of these sick elements need to be put into effect without any delay.