QUETTA - Unknown gunmen shot dead a female polio vaccinator and wounded another Thursday, raising the number of deaths to three in attacks against this week’s national immunisation campaign.

The latest shooting incident occurred in Balochistan city of Chaman where, police said, assailants on a motorbike opened fire at a polio team in the remote district on the Afghan border. They described the conditions of the injured female health worker as “critical.”

“The women were coming back from the field after administering polio drops to children when they were shot at by two unknown men riding a motorbike,” said Rashid Razzaq, a senior official at the polio emergency centre in Quetta. He told newsmen that one victim died instantly while the other received “serious” bullet injuries and is undergoing treatment in a Quetta hospital. Razzaq confirmed authorities have temporarily suspended the vaccination campaign in Chaman.

According to Levies sources, both the victims administered anti-polio drops to children under the age of five years in Sultanzai area when armed assailants riding a motorbike opened fire at them and fled from the spot. As a result, polio worker Nasreen died on the spot while Rashida received injuries.

Condition of injured female
health worker
is ‘critical’

Levies force and security forces have cordoned off the entire area and started search to trace out suspects.

Other attacks took place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, also bordering Afghanistan, where gunmen shot dead two police officers escorting polio vaccinators.

Additionally, authorities also arrested 10 men in Peshawar for spreading unfounded rumors through fake social media videos that a polio vaccine had led to fainting and vomiting.

One of the detainees, identified as schoolteacher Nazar Muhammad, could be seen in the scaremongering Twitter videos instructing his students to faint and pretend to be sick from the oral polio vaccine (OPV).

The videos quickly went viral, sparking widespread protests in parts of Peshawar, with angry mobs destroying a local health unit. Clerics in mosques used loudspeakers to warn parents against having their children vaccinated.

The scare prompted panicked families to rush their children to hospitals, where doctors examined more than 25,000 and concluded that none had suffered an adverse reaction after receiving the vaccine drops.

“We expected [refusals], but we did not realise that people would panic and that something like this would also happen,” Babar bin Atta, the prime minister’s focal person for polio eradication told Al Jazeera. “We have to run very aggressive perception management campaigns [to combat misinformation],” he said.

“We had planned for the next polio campaign to be at the end of June. That gives us some time to work on this.”

Atta said at least 262,000 polio vaccination workers and 151,000 security personnel were taking part in this week’s polio vaccination drive across the country, which remained ongoing.

Attack on vaccination team raises toll in similar attacks since 2012 to at least 95, according to an Al Jazeera tally.

Clerics and residents in parts of the religiously conservative Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan have long been suspicious of the polio vaccine, claiming it is a Western plot to harm or sterilise Muslim children. Militants linked to outlawed extremist groups also have taken responsibility for attacks against anti-polio teams in Pakistan, accusing them of working as government spies.

The violence against workers associated with polio immunisation efforts have in recent years killed dozens of people in Pakistan, one of three countries in the world — along with Afghanistan and Nigeria — where wild polio virus is still endemic. Nigeria has not reported any new cases for two consecutive years.

Balochistan Chief Minister Mir Jam Kamal Khan along with Home Minister Mir Ziaullah Langove strongly condemned the attack on polio workers in Chaman and CM instructed the relevant authority to submit report in this regard. The Chief Minister directed law enforcement agencies to immediately take action against those elements involved in this heinous acts to arrest and bring them to justice. He said protection of polio workers and citizens would be ensured in respective areas including rural areas of province.