India
celebrates a landmark achievement in public health – ‘the victory over polio’
on Monday. The country has now completed three years without any polio,
one of the key pre-requisites for polio-free certification, amidst a very
sensitive surveillance system for poliovirus. The celebration is
organized by the Ministry of
Health and Family Welfare to commemorate this great accomplishment as well as
to thank the efforts of all those who contributed to it.
The
event will be graced by the President, Pranab Mukherjee, the Prime Minister, Dr
Manmohan Singh, the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Ghulam Nabi
Azad, the Chairperson, National Advisory Council, Sonia Gandhi and the Leader
of the Opposition in Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj. The Director-General, World
Health Organization, Dr Margaret Chan, the President, Rotary
International, Ron D Burton, and the Global Polio Chief of United Nations
Children’s Fund, Peter Crowley, will represent the key polio partner
agencies at the event.
Representatives
of various other partners and donors, and ambassadors of various countries,
which supported the India’s fight against polio, are expected to join
the celebration. The highlight of the
event will be over 1,000 representatives from the field – the vaccinators from
across the country, the social mobilisers, the surveillance medical officers
and the health department officials – who were undeniably the key players in
India’s proud story of victory over polio. The polio virus surveillance system
in the country is among the best in the world. Nearly 40,000 reporting units
which include health facilities report as many as 60,000 cases of paralysis
every year to the polio surveillance network – National Polio Surveillance
Project. Each of these cases are
followed up and nearly 1,20,000 stool samples collected from the paralysis
patients are tested annually in the eight WHO accredited laboratories.
All
these samples have tested negative for polio for the last three consecutive
years –strong evidence that India no longer has polio. In addition, sewage samples collected from
Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Patna and Punjab have tested negative for poliovirus,
corroborating India’s unprecedented victory over polio.
The
achievement is of the entire country, the tireless efforts of the entire polio
workforce and the parents who came forward to accept polio vaccination,
repeatedly, round after round and year after year.
India
has not reported any case of polio since a two-year old girl got polio
paralysis on 13 January 2011 in Howrah district of West Bengal. All cases of
paralysis reported to the polio surveillance network until 13 January this
year, have tested negative for polio. India’s victory over polio paves the way
for polio-free certification of the South East Asia region of WHO in March end.
This
is an unprecedented progress for a country, which reported more than half the
global polio cases until the year 2009. Experts always predicted India would be
the last to stop polio as its endemic pockets in parts of Uttar Pradesh and
Bihar were among the most difficult places in the world for polio eradication.
India
overcame huge challenges, with a strong commitment that matched Rs 15,000 crore
allocations over the years to stop polio. Implementing innovative strategies,
the programme reaches an incredible 99 per cent coverage in polio campaigns,
ensuring every child: even in the remotest corner of the country is protected
against polio. India introduced the
oral polio vaccine in 1985 in the Universal Immunisation Programme in the
backdrop of over 200,000 cases of polio annually (as per estimates of the
Indian Academy of Pediatrics). In 1995, the first national polio
immunization campaign was held; since then two national and multiple
sub-national campaigns are rolled out every year for children upto 5 years of
age. In each national polio campaign, 23 lakh vaccinators, led by 155,000
supervisors, visit 20 crore households to immunize 17 crore children up to the
age of 5 years. In each campaign 17 lakh new born children are tracked by polio
vaccinators in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The youngest children being at the
highest risk, the strategy to identify and track them was introduced in UP and
Bihar in the year 2006. To immunize children on the move, transit vaccinators
are positioned at bus stands, auto rickshaw stands, railway stations, on
running trains, market places and important road intersections. Nearly one
crore children are immunized by the transit teams in each polio campaign, of
them 100,000 on trains.
Focusing
on the migrant population, the people on the move in search of livelihood who
miss polio immunization in view of their transient nature, the programme covers
70,000 brick kilns and 38,000 construction sites. Nearly 45 lakh children are
immunized in the high-risk migrant settlements in each polio campaign.
Since
the start of the polio campaigns in 1995, as many as 131 polio campaigns have
been held in India till date, in which 1210 crore doses of polio vaccines have
been administered till January 2014. Before each polio campaign, nearly 10 lakh
microplans are updated to ensure that no child is missed. Almost 15 lakh
vaccine carriers are used for the campaign to make sure that the vaccine
remains effective until it is administered.
