Salwa Muhammad, Iraq “This will be the last polio campaign of my life”

“I am a 32-year-old Iraqi widow with three children. Seven years ago I started working with UNICEF [the UN Children’s Agency], giving anti-polio vaccines to thousands of children. But my life has changed drastically in the past two years as my work has become dangerous because now I get threats at least once every two months.

I need to work to help support my family, so now I have to move from place to place. Whenever I feel that my life is threatened in a particular district, I move to another.

Many times I have thought of leaving my job but when a child opens his or her mouth to receive the polio drops and I know that it will save his or her life, I change my mind because as a mother I know how important it is to give children polio vaccines. But I have had enough and this is going to be the last polio campaign of my life.

We carry the vaccines in a special vaccine carrier and go knocking door by door asking if there are any children in the house. Sometimes we try to get information from the neighbours about other houses with children. But people don’t always help; sometimes they just close the doors on you saying that they will never assist Iraqis who work for foreign organisations or who work for the government, which has betrayed Iraqis. In moments like these you feel like someone is going to go behind your back and shoot you dead.

We are scared all the time when we go out to give the vaccines. Aid workers have been targeted by insurgents and militias and whenever we turn a corner we fear being hit by a bullet and becoming another victim of this violence.

In some districts the situation is even more dangerous with insurgents or militias coming after us asking our first names, surnames, religious beliefs -and they prevent us from knocking on some doors if people in those houses are from a different sect than the people with guns.

In those circumstances, we don’t try to be heroes by insisting on going into these houses because the threat is real and if we insist we could get killed. We usually ask a neighbour to inform the people of those houses about the campaign so that they can take their children to the nearest public health clinic where they can also have the drops administered.

Fighters believe that because UNICEF is delivering the drops we are supporters of the US forces. They do not know the difference between UNICEF and the US and consider us as Iraqis working for a foreign company. This is what makes this job dangerous for us. Iraqis do not believe that there is any organisation which is neutral and people lump you on whatever side they want.

Some of our colleagues have been beaten. Some, especially women, have been accused by fighters of being government followers and because they go out to work, they are also accused of being prostitutes. There are also allegations that our vaccine drops are contaminated with some poison from the US forces.

Of course, all that is ridiculous. All we do is to try and save children’s lives but at the end of the day we are considered betrayers, are accused of all manner of things and are insulted.

I have had enough and I cannot stand it anymore because it is becoming increasingly dangerous. We could lose our lives any time and there is no appreciation of what we do. Maybe when all aid workers stop working in Iraq, people will understand how important we are and how protected we should be.”

as/ar/ed