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Resistance against polio vaccination due to lack of transparency: Study

By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net

Cambridge, MA: India is all set to become polio free with no new cases reported since Jan 2011. But the road to being polio-free state was not an easy journey. There were many media reports of resistance to polio vaccination reported from across India. A study published in peer-reviewed journal PLoS One concludes that lack of transparency by the government about the polio vaccination program contributed to the resistance by people.




A campaign for polio drops in Araria, Bihar. [TCN Photo by Mudassir Rizwan]

Contrary to the media reports that Muslim religious leadership was offering stiff resistance to the polio program, the study did not list religion as a factor in the resistance. Most of the 107 people interviewed for this study showed distrust in the polio teams because they did not provide satisfactory answers to questions. Some also raised questions about training of vaccination staff on how to handle the vaccine properly.

Lead author of the paper Rashid Hussain of Brown University told TwoCircles.net that resistance was limited not just to Muslims, “the reasons people refused vaccination were complex, though there was significant overlap in the justification provided by participants from marginalized communities such as Muslims, Dalits, and Scheduled castes/tribes. “ However, “Muslims had additional explanations for their “resistance” to the vaccination program related to historic distrust of health authorities or the government,” he added.

Study was conducted between May and August 2009 in Aligarh district.

Links:
Abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3458871/

National Polio Surveillance Project: http://www.npspindia.org/