My friend took this as I am in the picture. Travelling along the treacherous main road out through Baltistan in North Pakistan there are small 4WD tracks off into very remote and isolated valleys. At each of these turnoffs was a well manned police checkpoint and traffic stop. In case you do not know, Pakistan is one country where polio is still endemic. Why? Because in some isolated border areas are pockets of very hardline, uneducated Muslims who believe that polio vaccination is a plot to sterilise their children. So they kill polio vaccinators, who have to travel with police protection. In the first half of last year in the South of the country 16 vaccinators and police were killed and 34 injured. This is a polio checkpoint, and at each of them is a vaccinator ( in fluoro vest)who checks every vehicle as the police stop it, and vaccinates any unvaccinated children. I talked with a few, and at this stop, met the lady in the photo, a WHO doctor, Nadia Sultan, who is responsible for the rollout of the current vaccination program in all of North Pakistan.
I was in awe of her work!
My educated family lives in a different remote region of the North where the overall vaccination rate is the same as Sweden’s.

Have a fab Friday and a mild weathered weekend! ❤️