Polio Workers Are Being Killed Over a Lie

On 3 November 2026, two police constables — Zahoor Khan and Arbai Khan — were killed in Mohmand district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. A third, Sepoy Sabir Khan, was injured. They were on their way to a security post at Hashim Kor checkpost in Pindiali tehsil, where they were assigned to protect a polio vaccination team. DSP Liaquat Ali confirmed the attack to Dawn.

A day earlier, four polio workers were kidnapped in Tank district. And on 2 November, Pakistan recorded its eighth polio case of 2026 — a 13-month-old girl from Bara tehsil in Khyber district, the sixth case from KP this year.

This is not new. On 22 September, two policemen were killed on polio duty in Noshki, Balochistan.

A sub-national polio campaign is currently running (2–8 November), targeting around 24 million children across 97 districts. The people carrying it out — vaccinators, lady health workers, and the police protecting them — are doing one of the most dangerous civilian jobs in the country.

Why are they being killed?

Because a lie has been repeated for so long that some people now treat it as truth: that the polio vaccine is a “Western conspiracy” to sterilize children.

Let me say this plainly, as a doctor.

The oral polio vaccine contains weakened poliovirus. It contains no sterilizing agent, no hormone, nothing that affects fertility.

It has been given to billions of children worldwide over several decades.

Pakistan is one of only two countries in the world where wild poliovirus still spreads — the other is Afghanistan. Every other country eliminated polio using the same vaccine that is being called a conspiracy here.

The real conspiracy

The real conspiracy is not in the vaccine vial. It is in the lie itself — a lie that keeps Pakistan's children paralyzed while the rest of the world moved on.

Polio has no cure. Once the virus damages the nerves, the paralysis is permanent. The vaccine is the only protection.

Every vaccinator who is attacked, every worker who is kidnapped, every constable who is killed on polio duty — they were standing between a preventable disease and a child.

What should happen now

The state must protect polio teams with everything it has. But protection alone is not enough. The lie has to be confronted wherever it is repeated — in WhatsApp forwards, in sermons, in drawing rooms.

If someone tells you the polio vaccine causes infertility, ask them for evidence. They will have none — because there is none.

Open your door for the polio team. Your child's two drops are the difference between walking and a wheelchair.

References

• Dawn — 2 policemen martyred, 1 injured in attack en route to polio duty in KP's Mohmand (3 Nov 2026): https://www.dawn.com/news/2041809
• Dawn — Eighth polio case of year reported as vaccination drive kicks off (2 Nov 2026): https://www.dawn.com/news/2041525/eighth-polio-case-of-year-reported-as-vaccination-drive-kicks-off-today