Save the Children Pakistan chief hostage to Pakistan CIA row Shipments of medicine have spent months bound up in red tape at airports - depriving an estimated 35,000 children of medical care - and foreign staff have been denied visas. Shakeel Afridi, 48, was arrested three weeks after the raid to kill bin Laden in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad and has not been seen since. He has been lauded as a hero in the US after running a fake hepatitis B immunisation campaign for the CIA. Intelligence agents believed they had traced bin Laden to a three-storey villa but wanted conclusive proof that they had their man. Using the cover of his health programme, Dr Afridi was tasked with collecting blood samples from children in the compound to secure DNA evidence that they were related to the world's most wanted man. Nurses who worked with Dr Afridi said they never managed to gain access to the compound. However, aid workers and security officials say Dr Afridi claimed to have been working for Save The Children when he was detained on suspicion of working for a foreign intelligence agency. Since then senior Save the Children staff have been blocked from leaving the country. Some workers have been given one-month visas but have to return to their home country to have it renewed every four weeks. "Instead of spending money on children, we have to spend it on airfares," said Mr Wright. Although Dr Afridi had received training from Save the Children - along with 50,000 other health workers - and applied for a job with the group in 2009, he had no further connection, said Mr Wright.