Vaccinating children against polio in India

Vaccinating children against polio in India

Paul Harvey of The Rotary Club of Bishop’s Stortford and his wife Pat of the Inner Wheel Club have just returned from another visit to India, where for the fourth year running they took part in the National Polio Immunisation Campaign which has helped to rid India of this dreadful disease. Pat and Paul were vaccinating children under the age of 6 living in the city slums of Ludhiana.

The Indian National Immunisation Day on 21 February had the aim of immunising 173 million children under 6 years old to minimise the risk of the polio virus coming back from Pakistan and re-infecting Polio Free India.

The team of which they were part vaccinated 1500 children and Paul reported: “The conditions were challenging to say the least. Pat and I were in a really poor camp and then a slum area that was much worse than anything we have been to in the past.”