PESHAWAR, July 18: The doctor, who carried out a CIA-sponsored vaccination campaign before assassination of Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, might not have known the motive behind the drive, said doctors and health workers, who worked with him.

“Dr Shakil in his capacity as agency surgeon was responsible for dealing with representatives of donor agencies and might have been lured by huge amount for running the campaign,” one of his subordinates said.

The person from CIA might have met Dr Shakil in the garb of a donor and offered him the task, he added. Senior doctors believe that he was totally kept away of the original plan and asked to launch vaccination drive in the specified areas.

“Majority of the doctors avails such opportunities without informing their department. They just drop a leave application. Currently more than 100 doctors from health department are working with UN and other donor agencies. The government doesn't know about many of them,” senior medical practitioners said.

Sources said that Dr Shakil, currently under detention for helping CIA in the fake vaccination drive, failed to carry out the campaign in line with laid down rules owing to which health authorities came to know about it and forwarded the information to high-ups that led to his arrest.

“An inquiry was already in progress and Shakil's family knew that he would be taken to task. Therefore, no hue and cry was raised when he was picked up by law enforcement agencies in Peshawar,” they said.

Dr Shakil might have mistaken the people, who asked him to run a campaign against hepatitis B in March this year in the town where Osama lived till he was killed on May 2.

“Dr Shakil didn't know about the CIA's intention of getting DNA samples from bin Laden house,” one of his former colleagues said. Had he known about the actual plan, he would not have opted for it as it involved great risks, he said.

The campaign, he reportedly conducted, was also flawed because door-to-door drives are launched only against polio to administer oral vaccines to children below five.

The hepatitis B vaccination is provided by the expanded programme on immunisation (EPI) of health department in its routine programme for seven vaccines-preventable childhood ailments at the health centres. “Before Osama's assassination, local health authorities in Abbottabad came to know about the campaign and an inquiry was ordered,” sources said.

Free door-to-door hepatitis B vaccination was quite unusual, they said.

The health department runs at least a dozen door-to-door campaigns against polio every year where drops are given to children orally. While for measles and tetanus, camps are organised in schools and hujra after social mobilisation campaigns in which people are administered inject-able drugs.

The matter was first reported to high-up by local EPI technicians, who are responsible for vaccination in their areas. “Some people asked the local EPI centre that they their children had been missed in the campaign and now they should be vaccinated to safeguard them against hepatitis,” sources said.

They said that the EPI technicians informed high-up in April about the campaign that led to Dr Shakil's reported detention by security agencies for helping CIA.