Hyderabad: More than 200 households with infants in the Old City refused to respond to health workers who came to their house to inquire about the administration of polio drops.
These families were being asked come to the urban health centre to administer polio drops to the babies as part of Pulse Polio. Medical officers waited for five minutes and more after knocking on the door on Monday.
In more than 100 cases, women replied from inside the house that there was no one and that they had no children under the age of five. They refused to open the door. This cold response of the people to the Pulse Polio campaign is not new but it is after a long time that such a large number of households did not respond positively to the health workers.
This was not the scenario earlier, according to medical and health officers who visited the area. The families that refused to give the polio vaccine to children were in a few lanes and these have been earmarked as sensitive zones.
Officers will go back to these houses with senior personnel.
This year, the resistance seen among the parents is high. In more than 50 households, the health workers faced male members during the mid-afternoon who stated that the other members of the family were not at home.
A senior medical officer from the Charminar zone on condition of anonymity, explained, “In many instances, it was observed that the first day of the house-to-house survey is not very encouraging. We will have to visit these homes again as they are not responding positively. This kind of behaviour was not noticed earlier. What we are doing is verifying whether the polio drops have been administered. To say ýes or no there is a resistance which is not called for.”
A field officer said that a week before administering the polio drops, health workers had carried out a survey by visiting the houses in the specified localities and prepared a list of houses having children below the age of five years.
“On Sunday, we marked the houses of the locality after the Pulse Polio drive. If there was no child below the age of five years in the house or the family had administered the polio drops, the doors were marked with the alphabet ‘P’ with the identity number of the worker and date. In case, a door was locked or the family had refused the vaccination for their children, they were marked ‘X’.
After Pulse Polio day, the field workers verified with the inmates of the houses about the administration of polio drops. The staff went to houses with doors marked ‘X’. If the occupants were home, they tried to interact with the inmates. If a family had not given the polio drops to their children but their parents were willing to allow it, the health workers were asked to visit that particular house to administer the drops. In case the families were reluctant, field officers would try to persuade them.
Charminar urban health centre medical officer Dr A. Priyanka who was on the field to verify about the families that had taken the polio drops said that though the overall response was good, the numbers were not adding up in the survey that the officials had carried out. “The missing numbers have to be traced and vaccine drops administered. To ensure that every child gets polio drops I am visiting the locality to interact with the families,” Dr Priyanka said. Only after the post-immunisation survey is completed can they put out the exact figure, she said.
