Aamna Aamna 
Taliban militants killed a police officer in the northwestern Pakistan region in what was the first nationwide polio vaccination campaign of 2024 for Pakistan. While heading towards protect polio vaccination workers, two assailants in motorcycle on the attack fired at the officer in Jamrud town of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Pakistani Taliban quickly claimed they targeted the slain officer and laid claim to his weapon. The violence may have halted routine activities but local police official Zarmat Khan confirmed that the vaccination drive will go on without interruption. Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister, backed this stand, saying he didn’t want the anti-polio campaign to be taken lightly as ‘it will be done with full vigour.’
This is only the latest struggle for Pakistan in its war on polio, after cases jumped from six last year to 73 this year. Yet polio still remains in one of every two countries of the world, Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, where it is endemic. The resistance to the vaccination efforts in the past has been based on religious misconceptions, as some clerics in the past have claimed that some ingredients used in the making of the vaccine are prohibited for Muslims.
This has been a continual source of violence against teams and their security escorts. Police officers protecting medical teams have been protesting last year over the series of militant attacks. A bombing in Balochistan province in November claimed seven lives, including the five children, who were the target of police protecting vaccination workers near a school, in a particularly disastrous incident.
It comes in a year where the militant violence has spiked in Pakistan since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, marking it as the deadliest year in almost a decade. However, Kabul constantly denies Islamabad’s accusation that it is not able to control militants stationed from its territory. But despite these challenges, Pakistani authorities continue to resist polio through continuous vaccination campaigns.
