Follow Ramesh's Journey

I want to start off by thanking Rotary Zone Institute Chairman Deepak Kapur for allowing me to attend the Rotary Zone 5 & 6A Institute. It was a pleasure to meet so many committed, caring, and generous Rotarians who are working so hard towards making our world a cleaner, healthier, safer place to live. After saying goodbye to Lokesh Gupta, Manager of the Indian National Polioplus Committee, Nima and I headed towards Moradabad via taxi for the Sub-National Immunization Day which will occur tomorrow.

It took about six hours to drive through the heavily congested streets; the taxi dodged big buses, wandering cows, thousands of cyclists, stray dogs, and auto-rickshaws. Poliovirus is spread predominantly where people have had contact with contaminated water, which is linked to poor sanitation conditions. It is no wonder why polio is still an issue here in India: on our way I saw streams of water where people were excreting fecal matter, pigs rested, dogs swam, people washed themselves and laundered linens, and children played. The potent smell of feces filled my nostrils. The environment was so overwhelmingly disturbing for me to accept, yet for millions of people in India, it was nothing short of normal.

Dr. Mohammad Arif Khan, Field Programme Co-ordinator for the Polio Eradication Efforts here in India, welcomed us to Moradabad. He arranged for me to meet with Dr. Ashutosh Agrawal, who is the Sub-Regional Team Leader for the District of Moradabad, and helped set up times to meet with other doctors, team members and partnering organizations so I could learn more about the preparation, logistics, and ground work needed to run a successful National Immunization Day.

Dr. Khan gave us an overview of the current polio situation in Moradabad, and the role that each partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative plays. The partnering organizations take on many different responsibilities: The National Polio Surveillance Program and the World Health Organization are responsible for surveillance, monitoring, data collection, and training of health staff; the Government of India provides resources, implementation, human resources and funding; UNICEF provides social mobilization and communications, and Rotary provides funds, advocacy, and social-mobilization.

The polio program has divided the District of Moradabad into 22 planning units. There are 321 areas which have been identified as high risk by the National Polio Surveillance and the Social Mobilization Teams. 208 of these high risk areas are rural and 113 are urban. On Sunday there will be fixed immunization booths in both rural and urban settings. Teams of three – consisting of vaccinators and supervisors – will be mixed up with locals from each community, along with medical professionals and members from the Indian Government. Not only will there be fixed polio vaccination booths, but there will be two-member teams who will go out to transit points such as train stations, and temporary settlements. Throughout the week, there will be three-member teams responsible to visit approximately 100 homes a day within the entire District of Moradabad. As of October 8th, 2008, 795,515 houses have been visited. After one or two days of mass polio vaccinations, B teams will be deployed into the community. B teams consist of two people – generally from local NGOs as well as doctors. These two-person teams are tasked to visit about 50 homes a day. People who still haven’t been immunized will be visited at their homes by professionals as part of the Routine Immunization Visits.

In recent years, the following improvements have been made to ensure the Polio Eradication is as effective as possible: increased female workers involved in program, paid volunteers in some of the resistant communities, evening house visits to accommodate those working during the day, diversified community participation from NGOs, Rotarians, Civil Defence, etc., changing colour of marking pens from time to time, Indian Government supervisors, development of newborn tracking booklets, and free health clinics in order to build a stronger rapport with community members and to address any issues that health providers are concerned with. As you can imagine, there is a lot of work that has been and continues to be done in the fight against polio within the District of Moradabad.

To end the day, Dr. Khan, Nima and I met with Dr. D. P. Singh, Chief Medical Officer for the District of Moradabad, and a few other doctors. After a short visit with Dr. Singh, we visited the local newspaper where I discussed with reporters my experience with polio, the success of the polio eradication efforts in the District of Moradabad, and why we need to continue the fight against polio.

Tomorrow is a big day for me: I will participate in the vaccination effort first-hand by giving children the gift of a polio-free life. How exciting!