The Fort Worth Press - Fighting Taliban and mistrust, Pakistan marks one year polio-free

USD -
AED 3.673005
AFN 68.386442
ALL 93.021933
AMD 389.349314
ANG 1.803734
AOA 913.000031
ARS 1002.721397
AUD 1.53358
AWG 1.8
AZN 1.702057
BAM 1.854577
BBD 2.020785
BDT 119.602116
BGN 1.858799
BHD 0.376916
BIF 2956.030306
BMD 1
BND 1.344124
BOB 6.930721
BRL 5.790848
BSD 1.000863
BTN 84.433613
BWP 13.672612
BYN 3.275301
BYR 19600
BZD 2.017372
CAD 1.39639
CDF 2864.999911
CHF 0.88374
CLF 0.035265
CLP 973.069559
CNY 7.241401
CNH 7.24719
COP 4396.59
CRC 508.251983
CUC 1
CUP 26.5
CVE 104.558213
CZK 24.0877
DJF 178.22092
DKK 7.087555
DOP 60.364405
DZD 133.750861
EGP 49.678296
ERN 15
ETB 124.782215
EUR 0.950275
FJD 2.269701
FKP 0.789317
GBP 0.791103
GEL 2.740301
GGP 0.789317
GHS 15.887842
GIP 0.789317
GMD 71.000247
GNF 8627.008472
GTQ 7.726299
GYD 209.391416
HKD 7.782965
HNL 25.291226
HRK 7.133259
HTG 131.472895
HUF 390.756993
IDR 15903.25
ILS 3.732285
IMP 0.789317
INR 84.493503
IQD 1311.043259
IRR 42092.505939
ISK 138.290123
JEP 0.789317
JMD 158.639851
JOD 0.709302
JPY 154.656495
KES 129.249619
KGS 86.506766
KHR 4038.536303
KMF 467.499881
KPW 899.999621
KRW 1398.125025
KWD 0.30759
KYD 0.834076
KZT 497.17423
LAK 21976.521459
LBP 89633.50686
LKR 291.187013
LRD 181.150969
LSL 18.152914
LTL 2.95274
LVL 0.60489
LYD 4.883414
MAD 9.998293
MDL 18.214834
MGA 4685.233124
MKD 58.48862
MMK 3247.960992
MNT 3397.999946
MOP 8.024142
MRU 39.785889
MUR 46.412517
MVR 15.460006
MWK 1735.461174
MXN 20.325297
MYR 4.464971
MZN 63.950307
NAD 18.152914
NGN 1680.590024
NIO 36.829479
NOK 11.03348
NPR 135.09167
NZD 1.703345
OMR 0.385001
PAB 1.000778
PEN 3.7981
PGK 4.029035
PHP 59.039501
PKR 278.226704
PLN 4.126669
PYG 7838.117183
QAR 3.649699
RON 4.729799
RSD 111.205995
RUB 101.000437
RWF 1380.157217
SAR 3.754257
SBD 8.355531
SCR 13.619994
SDG 601.497088
SEK 11.030315
SGD 1.343699
SHP 0.789317
SLE 22.575045
SLL 20969.504736
SOS 571.975839
SRD 35.43028
STD 20697.981008
SVC 8.757041
SYP 2512.529858
SZL 18.142596
THB 34.647019
TJS 10.658746
TMT 3.5
TND 3.159078
TOP 2.342102
TRY 34.465475
TTD 6.776157
TWD 32.567494
TZS 2652.359028
UAH 41.269214
UGX 3693.413492
UYU 42.784805
UZS 12854.406494
VES 46.433371
VND 25422.5
VUV 118.722009
WST 2.791591
XAF 622.001915
XAG 0.032192
XAU 0.000375
XCD 2.70255
XDR 0.761528
XOF 622.001915
XPF 113.087675
YER 249.924998
ZAR 18.116198
ZMK 9001.198706
ZMW 27.697968
ZWL 321.999592
  • RBGPF

    -0.5000

    59.69

    -0.84%

  • RYCEF

    0.1900

    6.8

    +2.79%

  • CMSC

    0.1200

    24.64

    +0.49%

  • RIO

    -0.3100

    62.08

    -0.5%

  • BTI

    -0.1550

    36.925

    -0.42%

  • RELX

    0.3300

    45.44

    +0.73%

  • BP

    0.1900

    29.27

    +0.65%

  • AZN

    0.5200

    63.72

    +0.82%

  • GSK

    -0.0750

    33.275

    -0.23%

  • VOD

    -0.0900

    8.85

    -1.02%

  • SCS

    0.0700

    13.14

    +0.53%

  • BCC

    1.3900

    138.8

    +1%

  • JRI

    0.0200

    13.25

    +0.15%

  • CMSD

    0.1910

    24.451

    +0.78%

  • BCE

    -0.4600

    26.54

    -1.73%

  • NGG

    -0.6100

    62.66

    -0.97%

Fighting Taliban and mistrust, Pakistan marks one year polio-free
Fighting Taliban and mistrust, Pakistan marks one year polio-free

Fighting Taliban and mistrust, Pakistan marks one year polio-free

Bathed in crisp morning light, Sidra Hussain grips a cooler stacked with glistening vials of polio vaccine in northwest Pakistan.

Text size:

Watching over Hussain and her partner, a policeman unslings his rifle and eyes the horizon.

In concert they begin their task -- going door-to-door on the outskirts of Mardan city, dripping bitter doses of rose-coloured medicine into infants' mouths on the eve of a major milestone for the nation's anti-polio drive.

The last infection of the wild poliovirus was recorded on January 27, 2021, according to officials, and Friday marks the first time in Pakistan's history that a year has passed with no new cases.

To formally eradicate the disease, a nation must be polio-free for three consecutive years -- but even 12 months is a long time in a country where vaccination teams are in the crosshairs of a simmering insurgency.

Since the Taliban takeover of neighbouring Afghanistan, the Pakistan version of the movement has become emboldened and its fighters frequently target polio teams.

"Life or death is in God's hands," Hussain told AFP this week, amid a patchwork of high-walled compounds in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

"We have to come," she said defiantly. "We can't just turn back because it's difficult."

- Thriving in uncertainty -

Nigeria officially eradicated wild polio in 2020, leaving Pakistan and Afghanistan as the only countries where the disease -- which causes crippling paralysis -- is still endemic.

Spread through faeces and saliva, the virus has historically thrived in the blurred borderlands between the South Asian nations, where state infrastructure is weak and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have carved out a home.

A separate group sharing common heritage with the Afghan Taliban, the TTP was founded in 2007 and once held sway over large swathes of the restive tribal tracts of Pakistan.

In 2014 it was largely ousted by an army offensive, its fighters retreating across the porous border with Afghanistan.

But last year overall militant attacks surged by 56 per cent according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, reversing a six-year downward trend.

The largest number of assaults came in August, coinciding with the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Pakistan's newspapers are regularly peppered with stories of police slain as they guard polio teams -- and just this week a constable was gunned down in Kohat -- 80 kilometres (50 miles) southwest of Mardan.

Pakistani media has reported as many as 70 polio workers killed in militant attacks since 2012 -- mostly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Still, a TTP spokesman told AFP it "never attacked any polio workers", and that security forces were their target.

"They will be targeted wherever they perform their duties," he said

Mardan deputy commissioner Habib Ullah Arif admits polio teams are "a very soft target", but says the fight to eradicate the disease is entwined with the security threat.

"There is only one concept: we are going to defeat polio, we are going to defeat militancy," he pledged.

- Vaccine scepticism -

Pakistan anti-polio drives have been running since 1994, with up to 260,000 vaccinators staging regular waves of regional inoculation campaigns.

But on the fringes of the country, the teams often face scepticism.

"In certain areas of Pakistan, it was considered as a Western conspiracy," explained Shahzad Baig -- head of the national polio eradication programme.

The theories ranged wildly: polio teams are spies, the vaccines cause infertility, or contain pig fat forbidden by Islam.

The spy theory gained currency with the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, whose hideaway in Abbottabad was revealed to the United States -- unwittingly or otherwise -- by a vaccine programme run by a Pakistani doctor.

"It's a complex situation," said Baig. "It's socio-economical, it's political."

The porous border with Afghanistan -- a strategic crutch for the TTP -- can also keep polio circulating.

"For the virus, Pakistan and Afghanistan were one country," said Baig.

In Mardan, 10 teams -- each comprising two women and an armed police guard -- fan out across the city's suburbs as morning turns to afternoon.

The teams chalk dates on the homes they visit and smear children's fingers with indelible ink to mark those already inoculated.

On Monday they delivered dozens more doses to add to the nationwide tally.

"We have the fear in mind, but we have to be active to serve our nation," said polio worker Zeb-un-Nissa.

"We have to eradicate this disease."

X.Silva--TFWP