Another polio vaccination worker shot in Pakistan

A polio vaccination worker was badly injured in a shooting in Pakistan, after six female health workers were killed in 24 hours.

A UN-backed campaign is ongoing in Pakistan to eradicate polio, but the string of attacks is calling into question whether this campaign can go on.

While it is not clear who is behind the attacks, the Taliban have repeatedly issued threats against the polio eradication campaign. Health workers said they received calls telling them to stop working with the "infidels".

But a Taliban spokesman told Reuters that his group was not involved.

A global vaccination campaign has eradicated the disease from everywhere except Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Wednesday's victim was part of a team of four or five men administering polio vaccinations when gunmen opened fire on the group, said a doctor at Lady Reading Hospital where the man was being treated. He remains in a critical condition.

The shootings, five of which happened in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, led provincial health authorities to suspend the polio eradication campaign in the province of Sindh.

But authorities in Khyber Paktunkhwa, where the capital is Peshawar, said they would not accept a recommendation to suspend the campaign.

Polio can paralyse or kill within hours of infection. It is transmitted person-to-person, meaning that as long as one child is infected, the disease can be passed to others.