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2022-01-28 India-Pakistan
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Fighting Taliban and mistrust, Pakistan marks one year polio-free
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[Dawn] Bathed in crisp morning light, Sidra Hussain grips a cooler stacked with glistening vials of polio
 ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set. Currently the disease is only found in Pakistain and Afghanistain...
vaccine in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
Watching over Hussain and her partner, a policeman unslings his rifle and eyes the horizon.
Continued from Page 3
In concert they begin their task — going door-to-door on the outskirts of Mardan, dripping bitter doses of rose-coloured medicine into infants' mouths on the eve of a major milestone for the nation's anti-polio drive.
The last infection of the wild poliovirus was recorded on January 27, 2021, according to officials, and Friday marks the first time in Pakistain's history that a year has passed with no new cases.
To formally eradicate the disease, a nation must be polio-free for three consecutive years — but even 12 months is a long time in a country where vaccination teams are in the crosshairs of a simmering insurgency.
Since the Taliban
...Arabic for students ...
takeover of neighbouring Afghanistan, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) has become emboldened and its turbans frequently target polio teams.
"Life or death is in God's hands," Hussain told AFP this week, amid a patchwork of high-walled compounds in KP.
"We have to come," she said defiantly. "We can't just turn back because it's difficult."
THRIVING IN UNCERTAINTY
Nigeria officially eradicated wild polio in 2020, leaving Pakistain and Afghanistan as the only countries where the disease — which causes crippling paralysis — is still endemic.
Spread through faeces and saliva, the virus has historically thrived in the two neighbouring countries.
In 2014 the TTP was largely ousted and forced to retreat to Afghanistan but last year overall bully boy attacks surged by 56 per cent according to the Pakistain Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, reversing a six-year downward trend.
The largest number of assaults came in August, coinciding with the Afghan Taliban's takeover of Kabul.
Stories of police martyred as they guard polio teams common, and just this week a constable was shot full of holes in Kohat — 80 kilometres southwest of Mardan.
According to media reports, as many as 70 polio workers have been killed in terrorist attacks since 2012 — mostly in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
Mardan deputy commissioner Habib Ullah Arif admits polio teams are "a very soft target", but says the fight to eradicate the disease is entwined with the security threat.
"There is only one concept: we are going to defeat polio, we are going to defeat militancy," he pledged.
VACCINE SCEPTICISM
Anti-polio drives have been running since 1994, with up to 260,000 vaccinators staging regular waves of regional inoculation campaigns.
But on the fringes of the country, the teams often face scepticism.
"In certain areas of Pakistain, it was considered as a Western conspiracy," explained Shahzad Baig — head of the national polio eradication programme.
The theories ranged wildly: polio teams are spies, the vaccines cause infertility, or contain pig fat forbidden by Islam.
The spy theory gained currency with the killing of the late Osama bin Laden
...... who is now beyond all cares and woe......
in 2011, whose hideaway in Abbottabad
... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden....
was revealed to the United States — unwittingly or otherwise — by a vaccine programme run by a doctor.
"It's a complex situation," said Baig. "It's socio-economical, it's political."
The mostly non-existent border with Afghanistan — a strategic crutch for the TTP — can also keep polio circulating.
"For the virus, Pakistain and Afghanistan were one country," said Baig.
In Mardan, 10 teams — each comprising two women and an armed police guard — fan out across the city's suburbs as morning turns to afternoon.
The teams chalk dates on the homes they visit and smear children's fingers with indelible ink to mark those already inoculated.
On Monday they delivered dozens more doses to add to the nationwide tally.
"We have the fear in mind, but we have to be active to serve our nation," said polio worker Zeb-un-Nissa.
"We have to eradicate this disease." 
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Posted by trailing wife 2022-01-28 00:00||
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Posted by SteveS 2022-01-28 11:58||
2022-01-28 11:58||
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