The martyrs of Pakistan’s fight against the crippling disease of polio
Fatal attacks on vaccinators target attempts to rid endemic disease
Nadia Khan treasures two photos of her sister Sumbal: one showing her bright-eyed and smiling, the other blank-faced in death after she was gunned down by militants, a "martyr" in Pakistan's desperate fight against polio.
It was May last year and Sumbal and her friend Shirafat were vaccinating children against the crippling disease at a rough mudbrick house in the village of Badaber in the country's militant-plagued northwest.
Suddenly, a motorbike pulled up and the man on the back opened fire, killing Shirafat on the spot and putting 18-year-old Sumbal into a coma. For 10 days, Nadia kept a bedside vigil.
"I remember her last moment when she lost her breath in hospital, lying silently," Nadia said ahead of yesterday's UN World Polio Day. "She could not talk. We wished that at least she could have had her last words with us before passing away."
Pakistan is one of only three countries, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, where polio is still endemic, and efforts to stamp it out have been badly affected by attacks on vaccinators like Sumbal.
In the 2000s, Pakistan looked on course to wipe out polio after a series of vaccination drives brought the number of cases down to just 28 in 2005, from more than 18,000 in 1993, according to Unicef data.