Peshawar , Pakistan ( CNN ) -- Seven teachers were kidnapped Thursday from Pakistan 's volatile tribal Khyber Agency for having supported a polio vaccination campaign , an official told CNN Saturday . `` They were not the polio workers , but they had been picked up by the unknown kidnappers for allowing polio vaccination in their school , Hira Public School , '' said Nasir Khan , the assistant political agent of Bara Teshil of Khyber Agency . `` They were not directly related to polio vaccination , but had supported the workers as volunteers during the recent vaccination drive , and that 's why they had been kidnapped , '' he added . Khidmat Kalaq Foundation , a local charity that runs the school , and a jirga led by a tribal elder were in talks to resolve the issue , he said . The school is in the Sipah area of Bara District in the Federally Administered Tribal Area . According to an official who was not authorized to speak to the media and asked not to be identified , a three-day anti-polio campaign had ended Friday . The World Health Organization 's assistant director-general for polio , emergencies and country collaboration said Saturday that the kidnapped teachers did not appear to have been involved in a polio vaccination campaign , as original reports suggested . `` We do n't have anything to corroborate that whatsoever , '' Dr. Bruce Aylward told CNN in a telephone interview from Geneva , citing his contacts in the country who have spoken with people in the area where the abductions occurred . `` What we have heard is that that 's not the case . '' At least 16 cases of polio have been reported this year in Khyber Agency ; law and order problems in Bara have left it particularly vulnerable to the disease , which has been declared eradicated from adjacent India . Anti-polio campaigns have been targeted by militants here since U.S. intelligence used a fake vaccination program to help in its hunt for Osama bin Laden in 2011 . Under cover of the program , the CIA sought to collect DNA samples from relatives of the al Qaeda leader to verify his presence in a compound in Abbottabad . Since July 2012 , at least 22 polio workers have been killed . The polio campaign has a history of controversy in Pakistan . Some mullahs have preached against it , claiming falsely that the oral vaccine leaves Pakistani children sterile . Last year , a Taliban commander in northwest Pakistan announced a ban on polio vaccines for children in the region as long as the United States continues its campaign of drone strikes . Polio , which can cause permanent paralysis in hours , remains endemic only in Pakistan , Nigeria and Afghanistan . After its case count spiked sharply last year , Pakistan stepped up eradication efforts . The numbers fell from 198 in 2011 to 58 in 2012 but that progress has stopped : Pakistan is the only one of the three countries where polio is endemic to see its numbers go up this year , WHO 's Aylward said . As of November 19 , it has seen 63 cases this year versus 54 cases as of that date last year , he said . A second concern is spread of the infectious viral disease from Pakistan to other parts of the world -- cases diagnosed this year in Afghanistan have been linked directly to virus from Pakistan , he said . CNN 's Tom Watkins contributed to this report .
Pakistan : They were arrested for having supported a polio vaccination campaign , he says . The case is in the volatile tribal Khyber Agency . Pakistan is the sole country in the world where cases so far this year exceed last year 's toll .