India held its annual National
Immunization Day for polio on February 25th. The country has now gone
two full years without a single new case. If India
continues on this track, it will be declared polio-free in February
2014. This marks a significant feat for India, and more so for the
global health
community, given that the Global Polio Eradication Initiative began
in 1988 -- over 25 years ago -- as a partnership between UNICEF, Rotary
International, the
Centers for Disease Control, and the World Health Organization.
During each National Immunization Day, approximately 170 million
children under the age of five are vaccinated.
Because so many children suffer from malnourishment and dysentery, they need to be repeatedly vaccinated up to the age of five.
All
children under the age of five get two drops of the oral polio vaccine
(OPV). Each two-drop dose of the vaccination costs 60 cents.
Two
health workers man a polio booth from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on National
Immunization Day. They will later go door-to-door checking for children
who may have been missed.
Children
crowd around a vaccination booth in Aligarh, India, a city that once
had a significant number of cases but has been polio-free for over two
years now.
Children
are given stickers and toys with "End Polio Now" written on them. By
having these signs everywhere -- on walls, in street crossings, at
clinics, and even on the kids themselves, they're able to make everyone
aware that an immunization round is taking place.
The
oral polio vaccine must be kept in a cold chain, meaning that it cannot
stay out for long periods of time in warm weather. When the square on
the vile changes color, that means that the vaccine is no longer okay to
use.
Children's pinky fingers are marked with ink to indicate that they've received the vaccination.
The
polio health workers keep meticulous records of the number of children
vaccinated. They use the previous month's records to gauge whether or
not they've hit the targeted number of children in a vaccination round.
While on a national level, India has only two immunization days for
polio, the regions that have been strongly hit by the virus, such as
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, see routine immunizations almost every month.
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