Blog #6, Malaz Mohamed Nour, Health and Disease, India and Polio

Although India records of immunization measles, rubella hepatitis B, TB and others similar were low in comparisons to the national rates; its polio rates are much assuring. India has achieved a 95 percent coverage, which became a model of its other effort of vaccination. Similar polio campaign efforts are being applied for other routine vaccination. Many organizations, including Unief that tries to communicate polio to the world, have efforts since 1988. Another is the World Health Organization that does a lot of data regarding collection, tracking and studying of samples. Secrets of the polio campaign success in India is in the efforts of raising awareness, large spending and detailed data that lead to results that are accounted nationally.  Another is the number of case workers in India who helped in informing the families and getting to various areas.

Polio is a problem that, although is decreasing in rate around the world, is scary were found. Places like India, Afghanistan and Pakistan account for the largest polio numbers in the world. Poverty, lack of awareness and sometimes being in that part of the world, make you at a much higher risk than others. Such campaign is something that set models for other countries and regions in the world having the same problem. Although organizations exist all over, little are actually able to reach far enough. Most of the time the problem is not where the problem is found but how to reach it where it is found, rural areas is often hard to reach which makes communication with its people impossible. Sometimes cultural differences and religious believe create boundaries and slow the message. In addition, sometimes places just don’t have money, and India’s ability to make such spending was important. Another critical point is awareness. The social workers who moved from door to door talking to mothers and giving their message of what to do now and later, even before vaccination, were very effective. Changing the mentality of how the people view such an alarming health issue in this campaign played a big role in controlling the problem itself.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/an-end-to-polio-in-india/?_php=true&_type=blogs&action=click&module=Search&region=searchResults%230&version=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fquery.nytimes.com%2Fsearch%2Fsitesearch%2F%3Faction%3Dclick%26region%3DMasthead%26pgtype%3DSectionFront%26module%3DSearchSubmit%26contentCollection%3Dhealth%26t%3Dqry220%23%2FIndia%2F&_r=0