[Pak Daily Times] Polio is on the rise in Pakistain, health officials said Wednesday, as the number of infections in 2013 passed the total for the whole of 2012.Pakistain is one of only three countries in the world where the highly infectious disease which cripples limbs remains endemic. Opposition from Death Eater groups has hampered efforts to vaccinate children against polio
...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set...
in Pakistain and officials said violence was part of the reason for the increase in cases. "Last year there were a total of 58 cases, but 62 fresh victims of polio have already been reported in 2013," a senior government official, who works with international donors working to eradicate polio, told AFP.
Six cases were in Punjab, four in Sindh and nine in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
, but by far the bulk of the infections -- 43 -- were in the tribal areas along the Afghan border. The Pak Taliban banned polio vaccinations in the tribal region of
Wazoo last year, alleging the campaign was a cover for espionage. "The main reason for the outbreak is militancy in the northwest. Vaccination teams are unable to reach the tribal areas because of risks to their lives," the official said. Polio cases reached a low of 28 in 2005 but have risen since, reaching a peak of 198 in 2011. In August health officials warned of a serious polio outbreak in the northwest, saying more than 240,000 children had missed vaccination because of the Taliban ban. Elsewhere in the country, health workers giving out polio drops have been attacked and killed, including in the largest city Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
. On Monday the World Health Organisation linked an outbreak of polio in Syria that has paralysed 13 children to a strain of the virus from Pakistain.