Memoirs ..........

The data entry work for the final publication of electoral roll got done on war footing, but that meant that every thing else had to be shelved for 5 nights and four days. There were no surprises either in the form of voter deletion or other changes.

The next Sunday was quite important as it was the day for the Pulse Polio drive, which was mostly organized on weekends.

Warpur had been in the news for some time in the state for wrong reasons as it had reported all but 1 polio cases in the state. The problem was serious because the minority community (which happened to be in strong majority in the sub division) was refusing to administer the vaccine to the children. Rumours had been spread about the affect of the vaccine on the child bearing capacity of the children in future.

The day began as Amit reached the office of the ACMOH at about 7am in the morning, as per the appointment. The ACMOH was there but his vehicle was not. As the vehicle did not report for the next half an hour they started on Amit’s vehicle. In the mean time, the ACMOH had been frantically informing the Health officers in the blocks that the SDO would be visiting their offices.

The reason was obvious as the first office itself was barely opened in the morning. Some of the supervisors who were there complained about the lack of the conveyance to bring them to their offices in the rural areas. The ACMOH told that there were supposed to be a vehicle for every 10-15 booths and most vehicles were in the field now and those people would have been late. The same story repeated in the second and the third block also, though no vehicle was visible around anywhere.

The Block Development officers, the administrative head of the blocks had counter information that possibly no vehicles had been hired by the concerned department. In the booths where 4 volunteers were supposed to be present, either two or three volunteers were visible. The turnout of children was hopelessly low while the target was 80% coverage on day 1 of the drive. This figure of 80% was important as the passage of vaccine through the stool of the children would kill the wild polio virus in the nature as well and some sort of immunity developed against virus.

Only by 10 am had most of the booths been activated. By 11 am the supervisors had again disappeared from the field after handing the boxes of the vaccine. Some had to be called back from their homes by the visiting team. In most cases the volunteers had no idea of the number of children they had to cover in their booth. It was sad to see that the doctors in the blocks had not taken any round in their areas to supervise the campaign and most were in their clinics.

The BDOs were reluctantly accompanying the SDO around their blocks. They explained that previously the scheme was being supervised by the BDO’s office and now the health department had taken over for some time. It was almost non participation, if not non cooperation, that prevailed. BDOs complained that the BMOHs had not ‘called on’ them and didn’t attend the Block level monitoring committee meetings or visit the BDOs office. Basically there was no inter-department coordination.

In the field the parents were hiding their children from the health staff and the health staff was not entering the interior parts of the villages as they feared reaction from the people on religious grounds. Some even explained that the local religious institutions had been advocating to people locally for past some days to abstain from the drive.

The whole day the campaign ran in utter chaos. Most of the volunteers were not aware of the target of 80% coverage on day one. Huge amount had been spent on the training of the volunteers but they were not aware as to how to convince the parents. Only in the booths where the volunteers present could be contacted, the coverage began to improve by the end of the day.

When Amit returned back to the Head quarter it was late evening. All the block offices had started working on compiling the reports of vaccination coverage. The ACMOH took leave to get the data compiled in his office. He was to fax the same to the district from Amit’s office later as there was no fax in his office. It was a disappointing and tiring day with hopelessly poor returns of very hard work.

The average coverage was between 30-35% against the target of 80% which the ACMOH confirmed over the phone and then he was not accessible for over two hours. Amit was surprised as he waited in his office for the final report. The ACMOH came to his office at around 9.30 pm with the final report to be sent to the district.

He tabled a report of about 102% coverage on day 1 of the Pulse Polio drive. 2% higher would be for children above 5 years of age, who got covered in the drive, he explained. While he was sincerely ashamed of the huge discrepancy in the actual coverage and what he was going to report, he explained that he had been ‘instructed’ on the matter. As it is Warpur was reeling under a disaster, a report on low coverage would only show poor preparations by the administration, he had been told.

Amit had to put his foot down that he would not allow that report to be sent from his fax. They needed serious steps to build up a campaign in the next few days. There were senior officials heading their respective blocks who had not moved out of their chamber. There was literally no supervision, the vehicles were missing, the volunteers were missing, and funds had been spent on training while the training had been missing. That way they would never be able to handle the situation.

Come monsoon and the situation would aggravate as the virus would spread faster. The only way out was drastic measures and that would only happen if a realistic picture was brought to the notice of the decision makers.

The ACMOH was reluctant to sign on the low coverage report, but finally he agreed to send the low turnout report under joint signatures of the SDO and ACMOH.