--- title: Pakistan: Militants Target Health Officials as Polio Scourge Spirals description: Militants target health officials across Pakistan as polio scourge spirals canonical: https://time.com/3608578/pakistan-polio-taliban-public-health/ author: David Stout article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-11-27T08:23:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T02:25:33.600Z article:section: Health og:title: War Against Pakistan Health Workers Continues og:description: There have been 260 new cases of polio in the South Asian nation this year. og:url: https://time.com/3608578/pakistan-polio-taliban-public-health/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0573a67f10a27ba1/69876b57e53aba7d584d62cf/polio-pakistan.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Hospital staff stand near the bodies of anti-polio drive campaign workers who were shot by gunmen, at a hospital morgue in Quetta og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: War Against Pakistan Health Workers Continues twitter:description: There have been 260 new cases of polio in the South Asian nation this year. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0573a67f10a27ba1/69876b57e53aba7d584d62cf/polio-pakistan.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Militants Gun Down Pakistan Health Workers as Polio Crisis Intensifies by [David Stout](https://time.com/author/david-stout/) ## David Stout Nov 27, 2014 8:23 AM UTC  Hospital staff stand near the bodies of antipolio campaign workers who were shot by gunmen, at a hospital morgue in Quetta, Pakistan, on Nov. 26, 2014 Hospital staff stand near the bodies of antipolio campaign workers who were shot by gunmen, at a hospital morgue in Quetta, Pakistan, on Nov. 26, 2014Naseer Ahmed—Reuters by [David Stout](https://time.com/author/david-stout/) ## David Stout Nov 27, 2014 8:23 AM UTC Public-health workers continue to be gunned down at will by Islamic militants across Pakistan, where ongoing attacks against vaccination teams have hampered the government’s ability to rein in a spiraling polio crisis. On Wednesday, heavily armed militants in the Baluchistan region capital of Quetta mowed down members of an antipolio campaign, leaving four public-health workers dead and three others injured. Survivors of the ambush [chided](http://www.dawn.com/news/1147014) government officials for failing to provide sufficient security for the team. “Two men on a motorcycle stopped our car and started shooting. No security arrangements were made,” one of the victims [told](http://www.dawn.com/news/1147014) the Pakistani newspaper _Dawn_. “We called everyone, but no one came to our rescue.” The bloody scene in Quetta this week has sadly become all too familiar in conflict-riven Pakistan. On Monday, near the city of Peshawar, gunmen mounted on a motorcycle shot and injured another polio health worker. A Taliban splinter group later [claimed](http://newsweekpakistan.com/polio-vaccinator-shot-near-peshawar/) responsibility for the attack and issued a statement deriding the polio vaccine as “dangerous to health” and “against Islam,” [according](http://www.latimes.com/world/afghanistan-pakistan/la-fg-pakistan-polio-workers-killed-20141126-story.html) to the Los Angeles _Times_. The uptick in brazen attacks against health workers has saddled Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s embattled administration with renewed criticism, after he made boisterous promises during his campaign in 2013 to make peace with Taliban forces. “Such cowardly attacks against our goal of polio-free Pakistan will further strengthen our resolve to stamp this menace out of the country,” Ayesha Raza Farooq, the Pakistani Prime Minister’s focal person on polio eradication, [said](http://www.endpolio.com.pk/media-room/media-releases/165-an-attack-on-polio-teams-is-attack-against-humanity-pm-focal-person) in a statement on Monday. “I urge the provincial government to take all measures necessary to protect the polio teams and ensure safe conduct of polio campaigns.” The militants’ suspicion of vaccination programs has been fueled in large part by the [bogus](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the%5Fworld%5F/2014/05/19/cia%5Fpromises%5Fno%5Fmore%5Ffake%5Fvaccination%5Fcampaigns%5Fafter%5Fbin%5Fladen%5Fraid%5Flinked.html) hepatitis B campaign crafted by U.S. clandestine officials searching for Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011, which later lead to the dramatic killing of the al-Qaeda chief by Navy Seals. In 2012, Taliban forces operating in the country’s tribal belt banned polio vaccinations and began openly attacking public-health officials trying to administer inoculations. More than 60 public-health workers have been killed in the country since the declaration. Since 2012, transmission of the virus has been most intense in the country’s restive Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). But following an offensive launched by the Pakistani military against insurgents in FATA’s North Waziristan in June, close to 1 million people fled the area. As a result of the exodus, the polio epidemic has spread to other parts of Pakistan that had previously been unexposed to the highly contagious virus. In the onslaught’s wake, public-health officials claim to have vaccinated more than 1 million people in the past few months, including 850,000 children under the age of 10, who were previously inaccessible, [according](http://www.polioeradication.org/Infectedcountries/Pakistan.aspx#sthash.KZsOSPoj.dpuf) to the Global Polio Initiative. Still, polio continues to spread across the country. Public-health officials confirmed this week the existence of 260 new polio cases in Pakistan this year — a fourfold [increase](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/world/asia/gunmen-in-pakistan-kill-4-members-of-anti-polio-campaign.html?%5Fr=0) since the same duration in 2013, according to the New York _Times_. Pakistan is one of just three countries where polio remains endemic. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3608578/pakistan-polio-taliban-public-health/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3608578/pakistan-polio-taliban-public-health/"},"headline":"Militants Gun Down Pakistan Health Workers as Polio Crisis Intensifies","datePublished":"2014-11-27T08:23:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T02:25:33.600Z","description":"There have been 260 new cases of polio diagnosed in the South Asian nation this year","url":"https://time.com/3608578/pakistan-polio-taliban-public-health/","keywords":["Pakistan","Taliban","islamabad","Osama Bin laden","polio","Peshawar"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0573a67f10a27ba1/69876b57e53aba7d584d62cf/polio-pakistan.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"David Stout","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/david-stout/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0573a67f10a27ba1/69876b57e53aba7d584d62cf/polio-pakistan.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Hospital staff stand near the bodies of anti-polio drive campaign workers who were shot by gunmen, at a hospital morgue in Quetta","caption":"Hospital staff stand near the bodies of anti-polio drive campaign workers who were shot by gunmen, at a hospital morgue in Quetta","creditText":"Naseer Ahmed—Reuters","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/pakistan/","name":"Pakistan"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3608578/pakistan-polio-taliban-public-health/","name":"Militants Gun Down Pakistan Health Workers as Polio Crisis Intensifies"}}]}] ```