Christians Under Attack

of Bajaur on Tuesday after health workers were detained and beaten up by armed people in the Charmang area, officials said.

Sources said a team sent by the health directorate was administering polio drops to children in the Babara Ziarat village of Charmang near the Afghan border when it came under attack.

The assailants manhandled the health workers and damaged vaccine kits. The health workers later said they had been kept hostage for more than four hours. After the attack, the administration suspended the vaccination campaign in the area for an indefinite period, Cheragh Din, the agency’s surgeon, said.

There has been opposition to the polio vaccination by some people who say that it makes the recipients sterile. A similar campaign was suspended in July last year after opposition from similar sources. A few months ago, an surgeon in the tribal area was killed in a remote village where he had gone to persuade people to get their children vaccinated.

According to reports, health officials have been trying to dispel rumours – sometimes spread by radio stations or from loudspeakers of mosques – that the polio campaign was a western conspiracy to reduce Muslim populations.

Officials from the World Health Organisation (WHO) have said that it is difficult for them to gain access to what they call ‘high-risk’ tribal areas, which include including North Waziristan, Bajaur and Khyber.

Pakistan is one of the only four countries in the world where polio is still endemic.

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