On Sunday 16 June, gunmen on motorbikes shot dead two polio workers carrying out a vaccination drive in Peshawar, a crowded city in Pakistan’s north-west. One of the men who died was a schoolteacher, the other a paramedic. Both left behind grieving families. Their deaths bring the total tally of polio workers assassinated in Pakistan up to nearly 20 since last December.
“People are scared,” says Muslim Raza, who heads the polio team in the Karim Poora area of Karachi. “Before this happened, many local people would come for a day’s training before joining the vaccination drives [which normally run for between three and five days each month]. Now nobody is volunteering to work.”
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