By IANS
Lucknow : A section of the Muslim community continues to resist polio vaccination in Uttar Pradesh even as authorities think of new methods to draw children to vaccine administration booths.
Officials said cases of parents opposing their kids being given polio drops were reported from members of the Muslim community in certain localities of state capital Lucknow. Similar instances were recorded in Kakori, a suburb about 20 km from here, during the pulse polio vaccine round Sunday.
"We have rushed special teams under the leadership of the local chief medical officer to personally call on families that refused to allow their children to receive polio drops," said principal health secretary Arun Kumar Misra.
He added that, "personal interaction with such people could help remove misnomers and misgivings about the vaccine".
Also, all eight fresh polio cases detected in India recently were from Uttar Pradesh, especially western areas of the state like Ghaziabad and Meerut.
Over the years, Uttar Pradesh has topped the number of polio cases in India.
Earlier, a UNICEF survey had revealed that a whopping majority of cases were detected among Muslims. Of the number of polio cases reported, 30 percent were Hindus and a staggering 70 percent were from Muslim families.
However, Misra said state health authorities had come up with a novel idea to get kids to polio booths and spread awareness about the necessity of taking polio drops.
A demonstration of the new technique was visible in Lucknow during the vaccine round Sunday when drummers were hired to draw out people from the narrow lanes and bylanes of the walled city.
"Our experiment bore fruit as a fairly large number of children turned up at several polio booths in parts of the old city here," Misra told IANS.
He said: "Our teams in the field confirmed a larger turnout of children in all areas where drums were used."
Unicef Country Coordinator Michael Galway had recently attributed the steep rise in polio cases in the state, especially in the western region, to the absence of basic health facilities.