Thank you to the scientists, health workers, politicians, and others who made this possible.http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/22/health/india-end-of-polio/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
By Moni Basu, CNN
updated 9:13 AM EDT, Sat March 22, 2014
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When a global effort to end polio was launched in 1988, the disease crippled more than 200,000 children every year in India. Almost two decades later, in 2009, India still reported half of the world's new cases -- 741 out of 1,604.
India has millions of poor and uneducated people. The population is booming. Large areas lack hygiene and good sanitation, and polio spreads through contaminated water. Many health experts predicted India would be the last country in the world to get rid of polio.
They were wrong.
Since Rukhsar's diagnosis three years ago, India has not seen another new case of polio. On March 27, the World Health Organization will formally announce the end of polio in India and proclaim another one of its global regions -- Southeast Asia -- free of the disease. Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria are the only three countries that have not eradicated polio, leaving the Eastern Mediterranean and Africa the last two WHO regions with the disease.
The last time WHO made a similar announcement was in 2002, when the European region was declared polio-free.
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Western nations conquered polio so long ago that its name is unknown to younger generations.
America experienced the height of polio in the 1940s and '50s, when about 35,000 people became disabled every year. Fear and panic spread and parents were known to warn their children to not drink from public water fountains, avoid swimming pools and stay away from crowded public places like movie theaters. Perhaps the most famous case of polio in America was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the first president with a significant physical disability.
The development of the Salk and Sabine vaccines helped lead to eradication of polio in the United States in 1979. In India, too, vaccination was critical.
"There were three keys to our success," Kapur says. "Immunize, immunize and immunize."
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The oral vaccine must be kept cold, and many places in India do not have electricity -- and even those that do experience frequent power cuts. Each vaccine costs only 12 cents, but refrigerating them was a major problem, says Dr. Mathew Varghese, an orthopedic surgeon who runs India's last dedicated polio ward at St. Stephen's Hospital in New Delhi.
India was able to come up with innovative ideas -- like refrigerators powered by kerosene -- to get vaccinations to remote villages not unlike the one where Rukhsar lives.
And then there was the campaign to educate. Rumors had spread in Muslim communities about the polio vaccine. Some Muslims believed it made women infertile and that the Indian government was using it to curb a minority population.
To combat such false beliefs, health workers began a dialog with clerics. They were able to build trust and persuade the clerics to put drops of the vaccine in their own grandchildren's mouths so their followers could see nothing bad would happen.
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Varghese has operated on thousands of twisted and mangled bodies, on patients who are forced to crawl on all fours. Polio, he says, robs a person of dignity.
"It's terrible to have a childhood ruined," he says, inspecting the progress of Haseen Jahan. She's lived with polio 23 of her 25 years. She used to press her hand to her thigh when she walked, to keep her left leg down. Her left foot used to point outwards.
In her dreams she walked upright. In her dreams, she danced, even wore pants, something she was not able to do before because of the way her limbs were bent.
Varghese straightened her leg with his orthopedic surgical skills.
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Learning from their own mistake, Rukhsar's parents have become advocates for polio vaccinations in their part of the world. Shah is thankful his daughter was not left immobile, but still, he worries for her future.
He is a poor man, and like most men and women in this village, he makes about $40 a month embroidering saris -- far less than the brocaded and beaded garments sell for. He knows he must save money for future health care needs and do all he can to make sure Rukhsar is educated. He is certain he will face obstacles in finding a groom for a daughter with a disability.
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