Cop guarding polio vaccination team martyred in Hangu attack
HANGU: A policeman deployed to protect an anti-polio team was martyred and four others were injured when unidentified assailants opened fire on them in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Hangu on Monday.
Hangu SDPO Mujahid Hussain said that the attack targeted a police van carrying a team of five personnel assigned to provide security to a polio vaccination team in the Chapri Waziran area. All of the policemen sustained bullet wounds in the shooting, but one of them later succumbed to his injuries, he revealed.
The Pakistan Polio Programme officially commenced its second National Immunisation Days (NIDs) campaign of 2026 today, to make Pakistan a polio-free nation.
The five-day countrywide campaign aims to immunise over 45 million children under five years of age. This effort is seen as a decisive step in the country’s final push to stop poliovirus transmission and achieve eradication by the end of 2025.
NEOC confirmed the first wild polio case of 2026 in a four-year-old child from Bello Union Council, Sujawal district, Sindh, last month.
The case was reported through the polio surveillance network and confirmed by the Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health (NIH), Islamabad.
In Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan — the only countries where polio remains endemic — militants have for decades targeted vaccination teams and their security escorts.
Over the past decade, hundreds of police officers and health workers have been killed by militants.
Polio, a highly infectious virus mainly affecting children under five, can result in lifelong paralysis but is easily prevented by the oral administration of a few drops of a vaccine.
The Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI) is already analysing the best response to tackle and prevent further transmission.
Despite challenges, eradicating the global public threat of polio in Pakistan and worldwide is within reach, and the PEI continues to intensify its efforts to leave no child behind. Since 1994, thanks to polio vaccines, Pakistan has reduced polio cases by 99.8% – from 20,000 estimated cases in the early 1990s to 31 in 2025. Staff Report
