Polio Immunisation - Visit to India

In February this year Rotarian Paul Harvey from the Rotary Club of Bishop's Stortford, together with his wife Pat, travelled to India to take part in the Polio immunisation programme.  Below is a brief account of his experience.

“There can be few Rotarians who are not aware of the commitment Rotary made in 1985 to the global elimination of Polio (it is disappointing that there are few people outside of Rotary who are aware of the commitment).  For the past 11 years, Rotarians from all over the Rotary GB&I are have being assisting in National Immunisation Days (NIDs) in India and last February my wife (Pat) and I went to India to take part in a National Immunisation Day.

The Immunisation Programme in India is impressive – there simply is no other way to describe it. In one day, 170 million children aged under 5 are immunised and during the following five days, every household where there are children under 5 is visited to check that they have been immunised and to immunise them if they have not. The most astonishing part of the process is that it actually works. During our time in India, we saw evidence across the country of children being immunised and households being checked. It is for this reason that India has been free from Polio for the past two years and is on target to achieve Polio Free Status in January 2014.

We flew to Delhi to join a group of 67 Rotarians (all of whom paid all of their own costs) who had volunteered to assist in the NID – we chose to go on to a village near the town of Badaun in Uttar Pradesh, others went to Lucknow or stayed in Delhi. Wherever Rotarians went, the duties were the same – participate in the vaccination process on the day of the NID, take part in the follow up programme the next day, and attend a number of support meetings with the various layers of officialdom responsible for ensuring the NID is delivered.

On the day of the NID, we went to a small village where the first Polio booth had been set up on a table in the street underneath a large banner. 

Awaiting immunisation

The vaccination process is simple – the child opens their mouth (either willingly or unwillingly), you squeeze two drops of polio vaccine into their mouth, the little finger of their left hand is marked with a purple marker pencil (purple pinkie!) and then they get given a Rotary present (a balloon, a pencil etc). The process is fast and when you have run out of children, you move on to the next Polio booth – the village we were in had five booths and we covered three of them during the day, vaccinating a total of 371 children.

We were astonished by the genuine warmth of our welcome. As we walked (subtly dressed in the bright yellow and red colours of the Polio campaign) through the village from one booth to the next, people would come out of their houses and offer us water or something to eat, others would shake our hands and tell us (in Hindi) how grateful they were to us and to Rotary and one of our number even had a tuctuc driver refuse to take payment for the fare when he found out she was a Rotarian and a Polio vaccinator.

Going to India to take part in a NID was an unforgettable experience and one which we hope to repeat in the future because even when India achieve “Polio Free Status”, they will have to continue with the campaign for some while because Polio is still endemic in countries on its borders.