India Has No Polio, and Still Gives Two Drops Every Year — Epoche B1
On one Sunday each year — and usually a second one weeks later — India opens tens of thousands of small booths and gives two drops of oral polio vaccine to every child under five it can reach. The child's left little finger is then marked with ink, so that nobody is counted twice or missed. India has not recorded a case of wild poliovirus since 2011. The story inside the story Health workers tell the story of the last case: a small girl in West Bengal, diagnosed in January 2011, after whom no further wild case was found. Inside that story sits another — the years of house-to-house rounds, of vaccinating children on trains and at road junctions, of persuading families who had been told the drops were harmful. The World Health Organization certified the region polio-free in 2014. Why the booths still open Because immunity is not a possession; it is a wall that has to be maintained. Wild poliovirus still circulates in parts of the world, including countries on India's own borders, and the virus needs only one unvaccinated child and one journey. If coverage falls, the wall thins quietly, and nothing is visible until a child cannot walk. Assessment The programme is not cheap, and it is not popular with everyone. But its cost should be compared with the cost of a return, not with zero. As long as any part of the world still carries the virus, a country that has beaten it is defending a border rather than treating a disease. The ink on a child's finger, then, is not the record of an illness. It is the record of a promise that has to be renewed each year. References John, T. J., & Vashishtha, V. M. (2013). Eradicating poliomyelitis: India's journey from hyperendemic to polio-free status. Indian Journal of Medical Research, 137(5), 881-894. World Health Organization (2014). WHO South-East Asia Region certified polio-free. New Delhi: WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia, press release, 27 March 2014. Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India (n.d.). Pulse Polio Programme. New Delhi: MoHFW.