Pakistan: 2 killed protecting polio workers in tribal area

Two police officers died in Pakistan's northwestern Bajaur tribal district while protecting health workers who were administering the polio vaccine to children on Monday, a security official said.

The two separate attacks took place in Bajaur, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan.

The killings came on the first day of Pakistan's nationwide campaign to counter rising cases of polio.

"During the polio campaign in the tribal district of Bajaur District, two police officials assigned to protect vaccination teams were shot dead by motorcycle-riding militants in two separate attacks," a senior security official based in Peshawar told the AFP news agency.

Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi condemned Monday's attacks and offered condolences to the families of the officers who were killed.

Why isn't Pakistan polio-free?

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Vaccine misinformation rife in rural areas

Polio is a highly infectious virus that mainly affects children under five. If caught, the virus can result in lifelong paralysis.

The disease is easily prevented by a vaccine, which can be administered orally with a few drops.

Prior to the development of the first vaccine in 1955, the poliomyelitis virus paralyzed and killed up to half a million people every year.

But misinformation about the vaccine has circulated in rural Pakistan and been spread by militants, who falsely claim the vaccination drives are part of a Western conspiracy to sterilize Muslim children.

More than 200 polio workers and police officers who have protected them have been killed in Pakistan since the 1990s.

Polio still endemic in Pakistan 

The killings in Bajaur came as Pakistan kicked off a week-long vaccination campaign in 79 high-risk districts, where authorities hope to administer polio drops to more than 19 million children.

Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan are the only countries in the world where polio remains endemic, but militants have targeted hundreds of police officers and health workers over the past decade as part of a campaign against the Pakistani state.

Pakistan has spent an estimated $10 billion (8.5 billion euros) on polio immunization programs in the region since 2011.

Despite two decades of challenges, including political instability, drone strikes in its tribal areas and conflict in Afghanistan, mass immunization programs had Pakistan on the brink of eradicating polio in 2023, with just six remaining cases of the wild form of the virus.

But the virus remains present, with a resurgence of cases. Some 73 were reported in 2024, 31 in 2025 and one case so far in 2026.

Pakistani polio survivor becomes social innovator

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Edited by: Louis Oelofse