Who wants to be responsible for a paralyzed child? [Archives:2005/859/Health]
By Amal Mohammed Al-Ariqi
Yemen Times Staff
The reappearance of polio created high alert situations at different levels. Ministry of health associated with UNESCO and WHO arranged many fortification campaigns, using financial, human, and technical sources to grantee complete coverage for the whole regions of Yemen.
Dr. Aisha Juman, who was called by the Yemeni government to work with WHO to evaluate the second campaign, enlightened us on this campaign.
Dr. Aish Juman was born in 1961 in Rada city. She is married and has a five year old girl. She received her education in Sana'a until high school and traveled to USA to get her doctorate degree. She worked as a lecturer in Sana'a University (1990-1992). She is now working as a head of Environmental Health Section in the Center for Diseases Control and Prevention CDCP in Atlanta.
Q: Can you tell us the nature of your work in this campaign ?
A: I came back to Yemen because of the request that was from the Yemeni government to be a counselor in WHO that works with the ministry of health and population to eradicate polio. It is an emergency mission.
Q: Why do you call it “emergency mission”?
A: Because we know that Yemen was free from polio for many years. It was a surprise and a disappointed to many of us when we discovered the first case.
Q: How did you prepare for the campaigns?
A: This is the first time Yemen arranged ” a house to house campaign “which hasn't been done in the past. I think we were all concerned because we weren't sure how it would be received by the public. We also weren't sure whether or not the workers would be able to knock on the doors of people who may refuse to deal with them. However I was extremely impressed with the reaction of people that took it very seriously. They came early to the centers, from 8am until 6pm.
Q: Can you explain the work of each team in the campaigns?
A: We worked very hard. There were many teams that had different tasks. Teams which belonged to the ministry of heath collected the information and data before the campaign. Teams evaluated the campaign since we had a lot of supervisors who went and assessed the work on the second and third days. There were also five independent monitoring teams that belonged to different governorates municipality, Sana'a, Mahweet, Amran and Marb. They used to go four days before the campaign, two days during the campaign, and two days after the campaign to send us the evaluations. We didn't want to just finish the campaigns, our aim was also to evaluate how the work was done.
We know the nature of our country and how difficult it is to move from area to other. This mission was taken upon “unknown soldiers” namely these teams. I was proud of being Yemeni and part of this community.
Q: According to these assessments how do you describe the success of the campaign?
A: The results that got back to me were very positive. I was quite impressed. The reaction of people exceeded what we had expected .
Q: Minister of health pronounced that Yemen needs more than 90% coverage, did we reach this rate?
A: Usually for polio eradication, we need fortification coverage of 90% for a country free of polio. Currently there is an outbreak. We had many cases in different regions in Yemen. We are waiting for the final results and I feel confident that we did reach this target.
Q: Are the children who already had doses in the first campaign going to take doses in the second and third campaigns? And what about the children who had polio?
A: The children who already had doese need not any more, because there is no benefit from that. Our object is not to reduce the transmission, our object is to eradicate polio from the country .
Q: What are you going to do to achieve this aim?
A: The polio eradication program globally started in 1988, and in 2003 only six countries in the world had the polio virus. Yemen was free of polio until 1998. I know it is not an easy mission. I think the best thing to do is insure high vaccination coverage. If we have high vaccination coverage, any foreign viruses cannot hurt any one because we already have immunity. We have seen this in Nepal and Bangladesh, two countries that are so close to North India where transmission of polio has been continued. Despite that people keep on commuting between these countries, they never have polio cases. So the major object is to increase the vaccination coverage to insure that children have immunity that enables them to face the virus.
Q: How do you describe the role of media in these campaigns?
A: I have to say that the media has a significant role in these campaigns. I think the media needs to be very careful in circulating rumors about the campaigns and the causes of the outbreak. Journalists need to verify the information and insure its accuracy, checking the internet, asking experts..etc. What is the benefit of scaring people by circulating rumors. Who wants to be responsible for a paralyzed child.
Q: What were the most hurtful rumors that affected the campaign?
B: When I was working in the field doing evaluation, I met some residents who believed that vaccines itself is the cause behind the infection of polio. They heard a lot of rumors where infected children became paralyzed after they had been vaccinated. The truth is that we did a genetic analysis and we found that this virus was engendered in Nigeria and transmited to our country. So it wasn't the vaccines. In fact the cases that have been discovered hadn't any fortification or vaccination against the polio virus. Some children had taken a dose or two that were not enough to protect them.
The vaccines are modified viruses used to stimulate the resistance in the human body to specific diseases. It dose not cause the disease but rather trigger the body's immune system to build a defense mechanism that continuously guards against the disease.
Some hearsay mentioned that the vaccines are expired and these vaccines lead to death. Actually the expired vaccines cannot be fatal liquid because it becomes like water. Namely it has no affect on the body at all.
Q: How did you deal with such rumors?
A: We tried to convince the people with all the methods. Talking with the people, using media, people have social states in their communities, religious men who talked about this issue and how Islam insists on the duty of the parents to protect their children from diseases.
Q: Do you want to add any thing?
A: Yes. I want to say that the only way to eradicate polio is by vaccination and there is no other medicine. So I address to the mothers and fathers to vaccinate their children.
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