Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan are the only countries where polio remains endemic and vaccination teams are frequently targeted by insurgents waging a campaign against security forces.

Yesterday, health workers launched a week-long vaccination campaign with the aim of immunising more than 45 million children over the age of five.

Malik Sikandar, a senior officer in the northwestern town of Orakzai, told AFP: “Two rebels attacked a policeman guarding a polio vaccination team.”

“The policeman died at the scene. A police team later chased down and killed two attackers and their local facilitator,” he said.

Another police official, Naveed Ullah Khan, confirmed the fatality and told AFP two vaccination workers on the team “were inside the home during the attack and remained safe”.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which has long been a hive of rebel activity, including by the Pakistani Taliban.

Pakistan has seen a surge in polio cases this year, recording 41 so far in 2024 compared with six in 2023.

Polio vaccination teams, made up of health workers and police guards, have often come under attack in the restive and mountainous regions bordering Afghanistan.

Pockets of Pakistan’s border regions remain resistant to inoculation as a result of misinformation, conspiracy theories and some firebrand clerics declaring the jabs un-Islamic.

Islamist opposition grew after the US Central Intelligence Agency organised a fake vaccination drive to help track down Al-Qaeda’s former leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Last month, dozens of Pakistani policemen who accompany medical teams during door-to-door campaigns went on strike after a string of rebel attacks targeting them.

Scores of polio vaccination workers and their escorts have been killed over the years.