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Clerics win minds for polio campaign

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published November 13, 2006

LUCKNOW, India - Farzaan Siddaqui beat up the last health workers who visited his home to vaccinate his children for polio. Like many Muslims in India, he thought the program was an infidel plot to make his community infertile.

Local health workers tried again Sunday, this time led through Siddaqui's Muslim neighborhood by a cleric, one of scores of community volunteers for an antipolio campaign in India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.

The campaign aims to vaccinate about 50-million children across the impoverished state, which has had 438 polio cases this year, 25 of them in the past week.

Smaller numbers of cases have emerged in other states, raising fears of a resurgence of a disease once nearly wiped out in the country.

Sunday's campaign focused on Uttar Pradesh's Muslim neighborhoods.

Siddaqui assaulted health workers in August as they tried to persuade him to immunize his son, 3, and daughter, 1. But this time, Muslim cleric Wajhat Valdi walked in while the health workers stayed outdoors. It took Valdi 15 minutes to win over Siddaqui.

Then others in the neighborhood joined in.

"I am so happy that they have listened to me," Valdi said.

Polio infects children younger than 5, spreading through contaminated water and attacking the nervous system. The disease can cause paralysis and deformation or be fatal.

Three years ago, India almost wiped out the disease after a nationwide vaccination campaign, but a combination of factors - including illiteracy and superstitious beliefs - kept many children from receiving immunizations.

[Last modified November 13, 2006, 00:37:17]