Woman health worker shot at after anti-polio drive in Pak

A Pakistani woman health worker was today shot at by gunmen while she was returning from an anti- polio vaccination drive in the interiors of Sindh province.
The health worker, Afshan, was fired upon by the gunmen on a motorcycle when she was returning home with her brother after the vaccination drive in the Garhi Khuda Baksh area near Larkana, police said.
The woman was stated to be in a critical condition and undergoing treatment in a government hospital in Larkana.
One of the suspected attackers has been arrested while search is on to nab the others, police said.
After the incident, authorities issued the orders to further increase the security of women health workers, taking part in the anti-polio vaccination drive.

Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio remains endemic.

Polio workers have long been targeted in the country by Islamist groups including the Taliban militants which claim that the polio immunisation drive is a front for espionage or a conspiracy to sterilise Muslims.
The attacks on polio health workers intensified after a Pakistani doctor was arrested on charges of running a fake vaccination campaign in Abbottabad as a cover for a CIA-backed effort to obtain DNA samples from Osama bin Laden ahead of the 2011 US raid that killed him.
The most recent deadly attack came in January when at least 15 people, mostly security officials, were killed and over 20 others injured when a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up outside a polio vaccination centre in restive Balochistan's capital Quetta.