Gunman open fires on Ghanaian doctor in Karachi

Gunmen open fires on Ghanaian doctor in Karachi

Gunmen opened fire on a U.N. vehicle in the southern port city of Karachi on Tuesday, seriously wounding a Ghanaian doctor who was part of a campaign to eradicate polio from Pakistan.

The attack was a further blow to the three-day polio vaccination drive, which had already been stymied in some parts of the country by Taliban threats. Attacks on international aid workers in Karachi have been rare.

The U.N. vehicle came under fire as it passed through Gadap, a neighborhood on the northwestern outskirts of Karachi, early Tuesday. The doctor, who was shot in the abdomen, was taken to the private Agha Khan Hospital for emergency treatment, according to
Guido Sabatinelli, country director for the World Health Organization, who spoke by phone from Karachi.

The doctor’s driver, who was less seriously injured, was also treated and released, Sabatinelli said. He said he could not release the victims’ names because his staff had not yet reached the doctor’s family in Ghana.

The shooting cast an ominous cloud over a major effort to push back a rising tide of polio cases in Pakistan, one of just three countries where the disease is still endemic; the others are Afghanistan and Nigeria. Pakistan reported 198 new infections in
2011, the most in the world.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=29105

Posted by Ahmad Mehdi on Jul 18 2012. Filed under World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry