Officials at the United Nation Childrens' Fund , one of the agencies helping in the large-scale polio vaccination drive across Afghanistan that was launched this week, said they were reviewing the involvement of women in the role after unidentified gunmen killed three front-line workers in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Tuesday.
About 70,000 staff, including vaccinators, are involved in implementing the polio campaign, of which about 40% are women. Female medics have been effective in implementing polio vaccine campaigns in conservative Afghan society as women in rural areas are reluctant to take their children to a male nurse due to cultural or religious issues.
Last year, religious hardliners in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar spread rumours of children falling sick due to the vaccine, triggering backlash in the conservative Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, where most of Pakistan's polio cases have been detected.
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