Spiritual booster for Bihar polio blitz

PATNA, April 18: Sunita Devi was pleasantly surprised when a local priest, Hemchandra Jha, gave polio drops to her three-year-old son with whom she had gone to a Durga temple to offer her daily prayers. She is among women in their thousands whose children are being offered polio drops as prasad in Bihar. The efforts of Jackie Shroff, Shekhar Suman, Farooque Shaikh and the local media seemed insufficient in controlling the increasing number of polio cases in Bihar. So, the state health authorities have engaged priests and Muslim clerics to make the drive successful. The misconceptions of illiterate villagers were a stumbling block. A certain section of Muslims, protesting against the US campaign against minorities, stayed away, presuming that the polio vaccines had been supplied by Mr George W Bush’s men, whereas Hindu families suffered from the wrong notion that polio vaccines lead to impotency. These misconceptions left 0.17 per cent of the total 2.1 million children in the state out of the drive. “We approached various Muslim organisations like the Imarat-e-Sharia, Anjuman Islamia and Silsila to support the drive and the response has been tremendous,” the communications consultant of Unicef, Bihar, Mr Srinath said. “It’s not important for us that 99 per cent children are being covered. What is important is that not a single child is missed since that leads to transmission of the polio virus to other children,” he said. The regional coordinator of World Health Organisation, Bihar, Dr Khandat, said they approached the religious leaders because they command huge respect. He was surprised that Bihar remains in the grip of polio even after several rounds of intensive campaign, while in the rest of India and the world, even a less intensive campaign eradicated polio long ago. Quoting a study of the London School of Public Health, he cited population density, sanitation and inter-virus infection as the main reasons behind the spread of polio in Bihar. “Earlier, people mostly from the Muslim community would hide their children or lie about their whereabouts when health staff went to their house to administer polio drops.” Of the 31 polio cases reported in the country in the last three months, eleven were from Bihar, even after 40-odd rounds of an intensive, anti-polio drive launched in the state in 1995. Last year, Bihar was the second most polio-affected state in India with 61 cases reported from various parts.