Pakistan: gunmen shot dead an anti-polio vaccination campaigner.

Salman Shehzad
Gunmen shot dead an anti-polio vaccination campaigner while injuring two others after storming a hospital where children were being immunized on Saturday in the northern parts of Pakistan.
The incident took place in Mattani, on the outskirts of provincial capital, Peshawar.
Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the killing, but Taliban militants have been targeting anti-polio campaigners and security personnel during vaccination campaigns. 11 people including leady health workers has been so far killed in such attacks
"Two men riding a motorbike stormed the office of an immunization officer located inside the premises of Civil Hospital Mattani and shot him dead," a police official told. "Two other local staffs of the hospital including a woman were injured in the attack," he added.
Provincial health minister of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, confirmed the attack. "Routine immunisation of children was going on in the hospital at the time of the attack," he said.
The Taliban imposed a ban on polio vaccinations last year as they view inoculation campaigns as a cover for espionage. But prominent Pakistani religious scholar, Maulana Sami ul-Haq, known as the "Father of the Taliban", has urged parents to immunize their children against polio and other life-threatening diseases, saying that vaccinations were compliant with Sharia, but the situation is still worse in Pakistan.
Last year the Pakistani Taliban banned polio vaccinations in the tribal region of Waziristan, alleging the campaign was a cover for espionage. Eradication efforts have also suffered due to long-standing rumors that the vaccine was part of a Western plot to sterilize Muslims.
Pakistan is one of three countries in the world where polio remains endemic and efforts to stamp it out have been badly affected by attacks on health workers inoculating children. Polio is also endemic in Afghanistan and Nigeria.
According to the World Health Organization, Pakistan recorded 72 cases of polio this year compared with 58 in 2012. New Delhi last week announced it would require citizens from Pakistan and other polio-affected nations traveling to India to take a mandatory vaccination for the disease at least six weeks prior to their departure.

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