Thread by @TheRealDoctorT

The following thread is based on a true story.

Since 1955, vaccination programs have reduced the incidence of polio by 99% worldwide.

However, in one of the most dangerous places on Earth, in the depths of the deepest poverty, one of the last footholds for the virus exists. 1/

Three gunshots ring out in the night.

The sound startles Ali, waking up the little boy. He sits up in bed and looks out his window.

Ali is 5 years old. His mother says his eyes are like twin moons. Right now they’re as wide as they get.

The night has gone silent. 2/

Distant police sirens.

Violence is a part of life here.

A cruel reality that rears its head from time to time, to remind the people how helpless they are in the face of it.

Ali tries to go back to sleep.

He doesn’t know it yet, but his life has just been changed forever. 3/

The next morning he asks his mother if she heard anything loud at night. She says she didn’t, and neither did his father, or his siblings.

They make fun of him, and he feels sheepish.

“Ali, always scared!” His older brother laughs.

Ali bites his lip, and silently fumes. 4/

The family lives in a village near the Northwestern border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Their lives are hard, but they have each other.

Hope is the quintessential human trait, and it still burns brightly here.

Months pass, and Ali forgets those gunshots in the night. 5/

One day, something strange begins to happen.

Ali notices that his legs are getting weaker. It’s harder to get up from sitting.

He tells his siblings, and they tell him he’s just being a scaredy cat.

His parents tell him to sleep early and rest. He’s getting over a cold. 6/

As Ali makes his way to his bed, he has no way of knowing that this will be the last time in his life that he will walk unassisted.

He lies down to rest, feeling strange spasms and aches in his muscles.

Closing his eyes, he breathes deeply.

He is 5 years old. 7/

Months earlier...

Rehana sits with her team of government workers. The six of them sit at a table, with a map spread out before them.

The map is marked with colors and pins, denoting places they’ve covered, and places they still need to go.

Outside, guards stand by. 8/

Rehana is a “community health worker,” just like the rest of her colleagues.

What that means right now is that she is giving polio vaccines to children.

It’s dangerous work, hence the guards. There’s a lot of suspicion and misinformation regarding the vaccines. 9/

Rehana’s parents worry for her.

It seems like almost every day now the news is filled with terrible things happening to vaccine workers, especially in the frontier provinces.

But Rehana does this because it is the right thing to do.

Her heart is in it.

She believes. 10/

The truth is Rehana has seen what polio does to the human body. What it does to children.

She has seen hope leave a child’s eyes, and she can never forget.

In a country with severe healthcare issues and minimal disability access/rights, polio is especially devastating. 11/

The fact that the disease is so easily preventable, and has been eradicated from most of the world, eats at her conscience.

And so she does this difficult, dangerous work.

Anti-vaccine conspiracy theories have spread like wildfire. It causes sterility! It lowers IQ! 12/

Rehana has to educate first, and then make headway. She has to listen, and be patient, and reason, and insist, and cajole. She has to win hearts and minds.

Whatever it takes.

Today she is going to a small village, where a little boy lives, with eyes like twin moons. 13/

She waits at the checkpoint with a fellow vaccine worker, and a bodyguard.

Someone from the village is supposed to meet them here, and take them to their lodgings.

The night is chilly. Her breath fogs and hangs in the air.

In the distance a motorcycle appears. 14/

“It’s about damn time,” the guard mutters.

The motorcycle draws nearer and Rehana steps out on the road, raising her hand in a greeting.

The first bullet rips through her white volunteer jacket and pierces her body just below her sternum.

The impact lifts her off her feet. 15/

As she crumples to the ground, she hears chaos erupt around her.

Screams.

Two more shots.

The motorcycle speeds away.

Dimly she is aware of a distant groaning. Perhaps one of the other two is still alive.

Her hand still clasps the bag with the vaccines. 16/

Her lips move wordlessly, as she instinctively recites prayers she has known since she was a little girl.

There is no pain. Only a growing awareness.

An infinite beauty.

A comforting warmth.

She looks up at the full moon and glittering stars... and sees beyond. 17/

Three gunshots ring out in the night.

The sound startles Ali, waking up the little boy. He sits up in bed and looks out his window.

Ali is 5 years old. His mother says his eyes are like twin moons.

Outside the village, a woman dies on a dusty road, and his hope dies with her.

Afterword: Thanks to the tireless efforts of community health workers and activists, the number of cases of polio in Pakistan dropped from 58 in 2012 to 12 in 2018.

95 polio vaccine workers have been killed since 2012.

google.com/amp/s/www.nyti…