Country: India

The fora provided a space for open dialogue on the epidemic and the obstacles to polio eradication. This kind of engagement is not merely about convincing parents to vaccinate their children, but is an opportunity to source local solutions to local problems. For example, micro-plans to reach every child were developed with all the operational heads of villages and ferricks, and the representatives of nomads. These fora also provided the opportunity to refute previous immunization coverage figures that were reportedly well above 100% – many villages and ferricks identified during the fora were never vaccinated. More

In Nigeria we have made remarkable progress in the fight against polio, with campaigns that drove polio down from 388 cases in 2009 to 21 in 2010—a 95 percent reduction. We are extremely hopeful these gains continue and we know much hard work remains.

This progress is largely due to the immense momentum of our polio campaign. It has demonstrated that immunizations are safe, cost-effective tools to prevent infectious diseases and ultimately save children’s lives. The number of parents who refuse immunizations is falling because parents and traditional leaders have witnessed the effectiveness of oral polio vaccines to protect their children from paralysis and death.

The polio program has provided the momentum to combat other vaccine-preventable diseases like measles, which cost us our children’s lives as well.

In January 2011, Nigeria launched a major campaign to administer both measles and polio vaccines to 31 million children under the age of five—thereby protecting children from two diseases. And during an upcoming national campaign later this month, health workers at fixed posts around the country will offer children doses of oral polio vaccines—along with an integrated package of other health interventions, including Vitamin A, deworming tablets and other routine immunizations.

From this broad perspective, conquering polio has an impact far beyond the immediate benefits of eradication. Perhaps polio eradication’s most enduring legacy will be that it lays the groundwork for countries like Nigeria to defeat other childhood diseases.

Still, there is significant work to be done. As long as polio exists in Nigeria, it can exist anywhere. To finally finish the job, we must maintain the momentum for mass immunization campaigns. Once Nigeria and the world win the fight against polio, it will inspire us to continue to tackle other pressing health challenges.

The Hausa people, who live in northern Nigeria, have a saying: When you shave a man’s head, it is getting the last hair that is the most difficult.

Similarly, the final chapter of polio eradication – in Nigeria and globally—will require even more effort than the previous ones. When we work tirelessly to ensure that our momentum is sustained we get closer to finishing the job on polio and building upon that success to protect children from other deadly diseases as well.

Watch the full video – Ending Polio: Building on the momentum

Ever since she was paralyzed by polio, Rukhsar has had to confront doctors, epidemiologists, physiotherapists and nurses – and this pesky photographer is the last straw. To her, they are all “doctor-folk”, and she wants nothing to do with them, her mother explains apologetically.

The attention around Rukhsar started when her paralysis was reported to the health authorities in her district of Howrah, in the Indian state of West Bengal. She is the only child to have been paralysed by polio in India this year.

Always a sickly child, Rukhsar was never vaccinated against polio. Her young mother Sabera Bibi explains, “I didn’t know what polio was. I thought the polio drops were for general good health.” Sabera’s two older children were regularly given oral polio vaccine during supplementary immunization campaigns, but because Rukhsar was often sick with diarrhoea, Sabera and her husband Abdul Shah were reluctant to vaccinate her.

When Rukhsar couldn’t walk on 13 January of this year, her parents took her to the local hospital. On 7 February, analysis of her stool samples confirmed that she had polio. Within a week, a mop-up vaccination campaign was taking place around Rukhsar’s home, to ensure other children wouldn’t fall victim to poliovirus. By May, three campaigns will have taken place in Howrah and the greater Kolkata area, to build a wall of immunity around West Bengal.

“I made a mistake,” her father Abdul says quietly, “by not giving her polio drops. I would beg every parent to vaccinate their child and not make the same mistake.”

Sabera adds, “This is the one child I did not vaccinate, and now she is the one affected. You must vaccinate your child,” she reminds her visitors.

Although her condition is improving with physiotherapy, it is not certain that Rukhsar will regain the ability to walk. Married herself at 15, Sabera worries about her daughter’s prospects for schooling and marriage. Abdul, who works in the zari (fine embroidery) industry like most of his neighbours in their village, frets about the financial costs of Rukhsar’s treatments. “The doctors have been very kind,” Sabera says, “but we have to think of the future and our other children.”

The virus which stilled Rukhsar’s legs is related to poliovirus found in New Delhi. Poliovirus can travel long distances easily, hitching a ride among travellers and migrants and ferreting out the most vulnerable – the unvaccinated, the under-vaccinated, the very young. In Rukhsar’s village, which is largely Muslim, most families have a member working in Mumbai, India’s melting-pot megacity. The village also has contact with communities from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the two polio-endemic states of India.

Many of Rukhsar’s neighbours are what public health advocates call the ‘under-served’. Poor, marginalized, often belonging to a minority or migrant community, these groups have less access to health and other government services. Polio in India is now nearly entirely restricted to these communities. The state and federal authorities use specific tactics to reach such children, tactics which range from mapping a migrant group’s seasonal movements to special efforts to address the needs or concerns of minority communities about vaccination.

But all of this matters little to Rukhsar, who is in treatment in a hospital in Kolkata. The paralysis has not affected her spirit, and she keeps her brows knitted in warning at her visitors, adding a sharp cry whenever they venture too close. “She has always been a handful,” Sabera rues. “Everyone at home misses her. But I cannot leave here until she walks.”