His bearded face was half-covered by a shawl, but Hameedullah Khan's fear and ignorance was on full display as he delivered a chilling message for anyone who tries to vaccinate his children against polio. "I will stab anyone who comes to my house with polio drops," Khan growled, refusing to be filmed or photographed as he shopped in a fly-blown bazaar on the outskirts of Peshawar, a city scarred by years on the front line of Islamist militancy in Pakistan.
This dangerous hostility to immunization teams flared last week after religious hard-liners in the city spread false rumors, raising a scare on social media that some children were being poisoned and dying from contaminated polio vaccines.
The rumors spread like wildfire, triggering mass panic in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Mobs burned a village health center, blocked a highway and pelted cars with stones. Medical workers were harassed and threatened.