Close to victory: India will officially be declared polio-free from today

A limp is all that sets Ruksha Shah, 5, apart from other girls of her age in her home in Subharara village in the Panchla block of the Howrah district of West Bengal. It’s the only remnant of the polio infection that ravaged her in 2011, which left her right leg a little shorter and weaker than the left. Ruksha’s the last recorded case of polio — on January 13, 2011 — in India, and if the nation’s polio eradication programme stays on track, it may well be India’s last. Being declared polio-free means the virus has died in the environment and new cases, if any, would be caused by infection in another country where infection persists.

“Ruksha is cured though she feels A little pain in the affected right leg when she runs. Earlier, many of us did not take our babies to get polio drops, but now most have understood the deadliness of the infection,” said her father Abdul Shah, a zari embroidery-worker with a monthly income of Rs. 2,000.

HT visited several villages including Subharara, Beldubi, Golpara and Biti Hakola around the Kulai Rural Hospital and found many families have not got their children immunised, which can result in new infection and outbreaks and threaten India’s efforts to eradicate polio. A recent WHO report said pulse polio immunisation-awareness programmes are yet to gain momentum in Howrah and South 24 Parganas district, where about 2,000 polio booths are set up during each vaccination round to immunise children.

Around 500 families are still strongly reluctant to get their babies vaccinated with pulse polio oral drops. On behalf of the government, we, along with UNICEF and NGOs, are conducting regular awareness programmes and have got a positive response from some conservative families." "Many, unfortunately, are still against immunisation,” Dr Prasanta Biswas, polio monitoring officer in charge of Howrah. Religious leaders are regularly invited to raise health awareness. “They have read out the religious texts to persuade villagers to look after their children’s health. Panchla block is the most sensitive area in the state because of the last reported case was from here, but about 5 % of the roughly 30,000 children up to five years who need to be vaccinated are yet to be immunised with polio drops,” said Dr Biswas.