Pakistan, along with Afghanistan, both absolute shitholes, are the last places on Earth where wild Polio can be found. Humanity is almost at the point where this terrible disease and the fear that it brings to people, can be eradicated, but for these two countries. I’m old enough to remember the terror that Polio engendered in people, especially parents and I’ve grown up with those whose lives were never the same again after they contracted Polio.

However eradicating Polio in Pakistan is incredibly difficult because some Muslims in Pakistan believe that the Polio vaccine is a Jewish/Western plot to sterilise Muslims. In any society that was even reasonably educated such bullshit beliefs would not gain much traction as people would see the link between Polio vaccine and their children not dying or ending up crippled because of Polio. But Pakistan is not such a society. The only education many people have there, especially in rural areas, comes from the mosques and they are too often run by clerics who are the sort of nutbags who believe that Polio vaccination is a Jewish plot.

In Pakistan Polio vaccination workers have to be accompanied by armed police for the protection of the vaccine administrators but still the attacks on these vaccinators come and these attacks have resulted in a growing death toll among the security forces guarding vaccine workers.

As is depressingly common in Pakistan there’s been another attack on those guarding vaccination workers as Yahoo News discloses.

Yahoo News said:

“Gunmen have shot dead two police officers protecting polio vaccination teams in northwestern Pakistan, a day after four officers protecting polio workers were kidnapped.

The attackers, travelling on a motorcycle, opened fire on a police car in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Tuesday. A third officer was injured in the attack, which occurred as the officers were travelling to a nearby village to protect polio vaccination teams.

“Two police personnel were martyred and another was injured in the attack. However, no polio vaccination staff were present in the police vehicle,” police official Ali Rehman Khan told the AFP news agency.

No one has claimed responsibility for the shooting, but similar attacks have regularly been carried out by the Pakistan Taliban, known by the acronym TTP, and other armed groups. These groups falsely believe that polio vaccination teams are part of a Western conspiracy to sterilise children.

In a post on X, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said Tuesday’s shooting was “extremely regrettable and condemnable”.

“Police personnel deployed to protect polio teams are performing a national duty; their sacrifices will not be forgotten,” he added.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is also where four officers protecting polio workers were abducted on Monday. They have yet to be found, and search efforts remain under way.”

Knowing what I know about Pakistan because of having to write so many ‘Now That’s Why Pakistan Is A Shithole’ pieces, I don’t rate very highly the chances of the abducted police staff being found alive and well. I have to be realistic and what we are dealing with when it comes to some of the various Islamic extremist groups that exist in Pakistan are groups that have no hesitation to kill for their interpretation of ‘Allah’s will’.

Link

Yahoo news piece

https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/two-police-officers-protecting-polio-123303665.html