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With rising polio cases, India dashes global hopes

IANS

MORADABAD (UTTAR PRADESH): Amit, 12, watches every step as he walks, conscious that he must be careful as he carries his younger brother Vinit, 10, on his back.

Stricken with polio, Vinit's flaccid muscles have ensured that he will never have the strength to move without help.

Scattered across villages in J P Nagar and Moradabad districts of Uttar Pradesh are many such human faces of the polio virus, demonstrating the physical, emotional and economic costs of the debilitating disease.

Poliomyelitis, better known as polio, is an ancient disease with the most common evidence being a withered leg. And it's back in media focus in India as another national immunisation day (NID) to check polio arrives Sunday.

Frantic efforts, involving billions of people and dollars, have been made to ensure a global polio-free certificate by 2005. To be declared polio-free, a country must not report any new cases for three years.

India should not have reported any new cases after December 31, 2002, as the government resolved to eradicate polio by that date, but it did.

"These new infections are threatening the security of the world. I can't emphasise it more. The only solution is coverage. This is the last leg of the battle and it must be won in India," said Yves Bergevin, head of Unicef's global health division.

Uttar Pradesh alone is home to 80-85 percent of the world's polio cases. New cases have also been reported in Orissa, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare A. Raja told IANS: "The pulse polio immunisation programme started in December 1995. The number of polio cases declined from 3,200 in 1995 to 268 during 2001."

The virus enters through the mouth and multiplies in the throat and intestines. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, headaches and vomiting. It can strike at any age but affects mainly children under three.

It cannot be cured but only be prevented.

Former health minister Shatrughan Sinha told Parliament in December last year: "The reasons for increase in the number of polio cases in the country, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, are because 10-15 percent children are being missed in each round, resulting in sustained transmission of polio virus in the community."

Under the pulse polio immunisation programme, NIDs cover an estimated 160 million children. For two days, booths are set up all over the country and oral polio vaccine is administered free of cost to children.

This year, the first NID was on January 5 while the second will be on February 9.

As volunteers, the Unicef has recruited nearly 3,000 mobilisers, or "influencers," mostly women, who cajole and coax reluctant families to immunise their children.

Social workers, government officials and international health experts have been holding regular meetings with religious leaders of all faiths, asking them to help spread the message about polio and the importance of taking the oral vaccine.

Maulana Kalbe Jawwad, a Shia cleric in Uttar Pradesh, told IANS: "Yes, we can spread the message because even the Quran ordains that we have to fight the disease."

Volunteers and health workers, however, say they lack people's cooperation.

One health worker said, "Many people don't understand what polio is. They believe it can be cured. So they say they give medicine later when a child falls ill."

Some claim they have compelling reasons for not going to the polio booth.

Ashfaq Ahmad, a father of eight, reasons: "I am a daily labourer. I can't waste time taking my children to a booth. And I can't wait at home for the vaccinators to come with the medicine. I will lose my wages."

But then, the clock is ticking. And so is a crippling disease.

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