[ad_1]
\n<\/p>\n
A policeman was killed and two others wounded Tuesday by a roadside bomb aimed at polio vaccination workers in Pakistan’s restive northwest, officials said.<\/p>\n
The attack came a day after Islamabad launched a nationwide anti-polio drive, aiming to immunise tens of millions of children in Pakistan — one of only three countries, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, where the crippling disease remains endemic.<\/p>\n
Opposition to inoculations grew after the CIA organised a fake vaccination drive to help track down Al-Qaeda’s former leader Osama Bin Laden in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad.<\/p>\n
According to Captain Wahid Mehmood, a district police chief, a police van monitoring the polio team was hit on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Dera Ismail Khan.<\/p>\n
“It was an IED (improvised explosive device) explosion in which one of our policemen got martyred while two others were wounded”, Mehmood told AFP.<\/p>\n
Sadaqat Khan, a local police official, confirmed the toll.<\/p>\n
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the Pakistani Taliban and other militants have targeted polio vaccinators in the past.<\/p>\n
The nationwide polio vaccination campaign aims to vaccinate some 39 million children.<\/p>\n
Tuesday’s attack follows a devastating year in Pakistan’s long fight against polio, with at least 17 cases reported in 2020 so far.<\/p>\n
In 2019, the number of polio cases jumped to 144 from just 12 in 2018.<\/p>\n
Even as Pakistan has tried to eliminate polio, a new challenge has emerged in the form of a growing global movement against vaccinations.<\/p>\n
The phenomenon has attracted adherents worldwide, fuelled by medically baseless claims and proliferated on social media resulting in a resurgence of once-eradicated, highly contagious diseases.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n