Unreported World: Vaccination Wars

Series 9, episode 0

Reporter Nelufar Hedayat and director Leslie Knott travel to Karachi, Pakistan to meet the health workers risking their lives to vaccinate children against the polio virus. The Taliban has issued a decree against vaccination and hard-line clerics are also campaigning against immunisation. More than 80 health workers have been killed in targeted attacks, but the teams, many led by women, are desperate to stop the spread of the highly contagious disease, which the World Health Organisation has called an international public health emergency. After nearly eradicating polio three years ago, Pakistan is one of the few countries in the world where polio rates are rising. The virus thrives in the dirty water and open sewers that flow throughout Karachi. There have been 322 cases of polio across the country in the last two years, the majority of them children under three