Indias’s children vaccinated in last push against Polio

A huge army of volunteers from Britain have been mobilised to help and in the final push to rid the world of Polio. The crippling disease, which regularly used to maim British children, until a vaccine came out in the 60s, has almost been wiped out. Polio is now endemic in just four countries - India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

The charity, Rotary International spearheaded the campaign to eradicate polio and pledged in 1985 to make sure all the world's children would be immunised against the disease. Cases have been cut by a staggering 99% since then. But there is still 1% to go.

Uttar Pradesh in northern India has a population of more than 190 million and the world's highest concentration of polio infection. It is the frontline of Rotary’s final push to finally win the war against polio. Some 2,700 vaccination booths had been set up in and around the streets in the capital of Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow. The British Rotarians helped give out the vaccination drops and get parents out to the booths with their children.

OnSunday four-year-old Mohamed Yusuf was among scores of children brought to a school in Lucknow to be vaccinated. His sister Saba Banu, 12, comes to join them. Saba's right leg is stunted from polio, which she caught when she was two.

With India’s desperate poverty and large families, disabled children can be left in the rubbish or face a lifetime of begging on the street, but Yusuf and Saba’s mother, Afsar Jahan will not let that to happen to Saba. "She has always gone to school," she says of her daughter. "I will give her the best education I can so she will be compensated," she told The Guardian newspaper. Afsar would one day like to see Saba get married, but she knows her daughter's chances are slim. Afsar Jahan helps spread the word about immunisation in her community. "I have suffered," she says. "Now I tell everyone, 'Please, do not make the same mistake.'"

Until recently, 70% of the cases of polio were found to be affecting this community in Uttar Pradesh because of false fears that the vaccine drops were part of a Western plot to make Muslims infertile in an attempt to control the Islamic population.

India is the key to a polio-free world, said Oliver Rosenbauer of the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s drive to wipe out the disease. India, Rosenbauer says, is "very, very close" to eradicating type 1 polio. Type 2 has already disappeared. But there are huge challenges. "The quality of the immunisation campaign is very high, they reach upwards of 95% of kids. But there are half a million babies born in Uttar Pradesh every month, extremely poor sanitation and a tropical weather system that helps transmission."

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children