Taliban in Pakistan Derail World Polio Eradication
Last January Salma Jaffar was shot while she was going door to door in Karachi, giving children drops of the polio vaccine.
“Even when they took out the pistol, I couldn’t understand why he was taking out the gun,” Jaffar says of the two men who pulled up on a motorcycle and started shooting at the vaccination team.
“But when he opened fire, that is when I thought it was the end of the life,” she says. “My first thought was that I won’t be able to see my children again.”
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Salma Jaffar was shot four times while vaccinating children in Karachi last January. She survived. But more than 60 polio workers have been killed in Pakistan over the past two years.
Jason Beaubien/NPR
Jaffar was shot four times: twice in her arm and twice in her chest. She spent the next three weeks in an intensive care unit.
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