KARACHI – Two women polio workers were killed during a firing incident in Shalkot area of Quetta on Thursday after year’s first countrywide campaign launched earlier this week.
According to police, unknown assailants targeted a team of polio vaccinators when two women got injured. They were shifted to hospital where they succumbed to their injuries. The deceased women have identified as mother and her daughter.
The police have launched an investigation into the case to trace the culprits.
The family of the victims claimed that no any security has been provided to the anti-polio workers in the area. They said that the brutal incident could be averted by taking security measures.
In the recent campaign, according to health officials, 19.15 million children will be administered polio drops in Punjab, 8.7 million in Sindh, 5.68 million in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 2.46 million in Balochistan, 1.03 million in Federally Administered Tribal Areas, 0.74 million in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, 0.237 million in Gilgit-Baltistan and 0.313 million children in Islamabad.
It is not the first attack as anti-polio workers are often targetted in Pakistan, which is still fighting against the crippling disease.
Last year in December, a new polio case surfaced in the Gulistan area of Killa Abdullah district where a 16-month-old child was diagnosed with polio virus, pushing the total number of cases to three in the year.
