The Times of India
05/26/2010
KANPUR: Three members of Pulse Polio party were severely thrashed in Rawatpur area under the Kalyanpur police station limits during an immunisation drive here on Wednesday.
According to reports, the incident took place when one Pappu Siddiqui and Munna Siddiqui, both residents of Rawatpur severely thrashed three health workers-Rohit Malhotra, Sapna Verma and Bedi Chauhan who reached their doorstep for door-to-door pulse polio immunisation drive. As informed by the district health officials, in order to evade the health workers from inquiries regarding their children, the duo in agitation started thrashing the Pulse Polio volunteers.
Taking action, the workers reported the incidence to the senior health authorities who in turn lodged an FIR against the accused with Kalyanpur police station. The nodal officer, Immunisation and Polio Campaign, Dr AP Chaturvedi informed, “For the door-to-door polio drive the volunteers are trained to ask certain set of questions to the families they approach. However, locals raise objection and are most of the time unwilling to provide the details like age of their children and whether or not they have earlier received polio vaccination.”
Notably during the immunisation drives, the family members try to avoid the polio drive volunteers by saying that their children are away or not keeping well. Such families do not say ‘no’ to vaccination openly. Even, the health workers come across cases where conservative section of minority community are still bounded by the myth that polio vaccines can lead to impotency in their children and lower their community’s birth rate.
However, when polio is still prevalent in the state, such defiances are being reported several times. As many as 20 cases of polio have been registered all across the country in the beginning of 2010 itself. These include 10 cases from Uttar Pradesh, 6 cases from Bihar and a single case of P3 polio virus from Haryana. Subsequently, Jammu and Kashmir, West Bengal and Maharastra also reported one case each of P1 virus strain.
According to the details provided by the health department, in Uttar Pradesh single cases of P3 polio virus have been reported from Badaun, Baghpat, Etah and Firozabad. Whereas two cases each have been traced at Ghaziabad, Muzzafarnagar and Mathura.
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