Church workers rejoice as India declared polio-free

Feb.12,2014:The World Health Organization - WHO, declared India "polio-free" Feb. 11, church health workers celebrated and reflected on the challenges they faced convincing parents to allow their children to get the vaccine. "It is a moment of great of joy for all the health workers," said Father Tomi Thomas, director-general of the Catholic Health Association of India, (CHAI). Many of CHAI’s 3,400 Catholic health care centers were partners in the government's polio eradication program. "At least 1 million children were reached through our centers annually," said the priest, a member of the Indian Missionary Society.
While the polio eradication campaign has raised the health awareness among the poor, the Head of CHAI noted that "the challenges are too many." "The threat of re-infection looms large. And we need to be vigilant. Keeping polio out is not the only part of what India has to achieve to secure the lives of all its newborn children," said Father Thomas.
John Shumlansky, Catholic Relief Services' (CRS) country representative in India, attended national celebrations, led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, at an indoor stadium in New Delhi Feb. 11. Though India -- a nation of 1.27 billion people -- recorded 741 cases of polio in 2009, no incident of the crippling disease had been reported since January 2011.
Summing up CRS involvement in India's fight against the disease that affected 200,000 annually in the 1980s, Shumlansky said his agency helped mobilize people to facilitate the government's polio immunization program and vaccinate more than 5 million children from 2008 to 2012. While the government provided the polio vaccine and oral drops to the church centers, the cost of mobilizing the teams was sponsored by CRS, the U.S. bishops' international relief and development agency.
Source: Ucan