Two police officers were shot dead on Monday in Pakistan’s northwestern Bajaur district while guarding teams administering oral polio vaccine to children, a senior security official said. The attacks occurred in two separate incidents in Bajaur, a tribal district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that borders Afghanistan.
According to the official based in Peshawar, motorcycle-riding militants opened fire on officers assigned to protect vaccination teams. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi condemned the attacks and offered his condolences to the families of the slain officers.
The killings came on the first day of a nationwide, week-long polio vaccination drive targeting 79 high-risk districts. Authorities aim to give polio drops to more than 19 million children during the campaign.
Poliomyelitis is a highly infectious virus that primarily affects children under five and can cause permanent paralysis. The disease is preventable with a simple oral vaccine that is administered in a few drops. Before the first vaccine was developed in 1955, polio paralysed and killed hundreds of thousands of people annually.
In rural Pakistan, vaccine misinformation has been widespread. Militants and others have spread false claims that vaccination campaigns are part of a Western plot to sterilize Muslim children, which has undermined public confidence and put health workers and their protectors at risk. More than 200 polio vaccinators and the police who have guarded them have been killed in Pakistan since the 1990s.
Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan remain the only countries where wild poliovirus is still endemic. Despite two decades of challenges — including political instability, conflict in tribal areas and cross-border tensions — Pakistan came close to eradication in 2023, reporting only six wild poliovirus cases that year. However, cases have resurged: 73 were reported in 2024, 31 in 2025 and one case so far in 2026.
Pakistan has invested heavily in immunization efforts, spending an estimated $10 billion since 2011 on polio programs. Health authorities say maintaining large-scale vaccination campaigns is crucial to prevent the spread of the virus, even as security threats against vaccination teams continue to hamper efforts.