It was a chill evening past five. The sun had already set. The second day following the National Immunization Day in the month was just over and the feed back session in the beautiful lawn of the CMO's Bungalow was drawing to a close.
Gaziabad had assumed particular importance because of its situation bordering Delhi, and as a buffer district with very large migrant and commuting population. Gaziabad being one of the widest districts with prominent urban and rural areas, feed back was a slow process. Dr. Amanullah had just arrived at the CMO's bungalow to be told that the CMO, the DIO and others were happy that the resistance appeared to have been practically diffused and people seemed to be cooperative. The turnout at the booths was 25 to 30% higher than the corresponding figures for the previous NID. In the one hundred and odd villages covered by him the door to door vaccination went on smoothly without any untoward incidents being reported. Wherever there was resistance, it was successfully resolved by him and Dr. Ashok Agrawal. Some kind of reluctance still prevailed which the MOs in charge could handle. That was enough reason for one to get elated. Possibly God did not like this conceit.
The CMO realized that Dr. Amanullah had toiled through some hundreds of kilometers of dusty and muddy unsurfaced roads and village lanes with, at times knee deep, mixture of cow dung, buffalo urine and excreta, without any food for the past many days. This morning he had witnessed himself an episode of great tension being resolved by him. Dr. Amanullah had, immediately after leaving Jehangir Nagar, gone to yet another spot near Pilkhana on the National High way.
He was asked to a bite of rich sandwiches and hot coffee before he would retire to the private guest house in Noeda. He and the deputies, the WHO Surveillance Officers, UNESCO Coordinators and others were so keen to make him talk about the novel experience.
Hardly had he settled down after delivering a brief account of the exercise that day, CMO's mobile chimed.
His face suddenly became pale and he looked at Dr. Amanullah with a sense of acute fright. Extending the mobile to him he said in a trembling voice, "Doctor Sa'b, it appears that all is not well in Moradpur."
He took the phone. At the other end was Dr. Agrawal. His voice was not coming out clearly. The young medic appeared to be badly stricken with agony. Somehow he conveyed that he and his team of vaccinators numbering some fifteen persons including 4 or 5 women, were facing a tumultous mob in one of the gullies (bylanes) of Masjid Mandi, adjoining Eid Gah, in the Moradpur suburb. They needed help. And Dr. Agrawal wanted him to intervene. He had already turned down an offer of help by the Deputy Superintendent of Police which would have only infuriated the people.
The place was sixty km in the opposite direction. He had been there on the Friday last and the Imam of the Mandi Masjid had promised him all help and assured that everything would be fine and that there was no need for him to go again as the people, who listened to his speech and explanations in the Masjid after the Friday prayers, appeared so much convinced and had even volunteered to assist the vaccination team. Dr. Agrawal and the Dy. CMO were personally told by the local people that incidents which prevented them in the previous NIDs will not repeat!
There was no time to lose. Picking up a couple of sandwiches and a bottle of water he jumped into the same vehicle and rushed to Mandi Masjid.
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"Let anybody come. We will not allow our children to be made eunuchs."
"We know all these tricks, an earlier government tried to curtail our population by surgery and now this government is using the drops for the same purpose."
"Even children die as soon as they are given the drops."
The resistant women were shouting at the team.
"Here comes an agent of the Government; a fellow all the way from somewhere in the south – totally sold to the Americans"
"He puts on an air as if he is a friend of the community" "We know how he makes money by letting us down!"
"A pucca traitor !!"
were the shocking utterances by the men in arms as Dr. Amanullah was stepping down from the car.
The Imam had been making repeated announcements and requesting the people to cooperate. People in other parts of the suburb had become softened by these announcements, Dr. Amanullah's speech at the mosque and the statements of the Shahi Imam of Delhi and various other religious leaders put through big posters by the National Polio Plus Committee of Rotary. Though some were not fully convinced they allowed others to decide on what they thought the best.
In the Eid-Gah things were different. People would not listen to the Imam. They were shouting at him asking him to go back to Uttaranchal from where he came. Dr. Amanullah could realize that a direct confrontation would be disastrous. Certainly, he would not wish to die beaten up, for it was not his mission to end up as a Shaheed or a martyre. He had to get eight hundred plus children trapped there in that gully vaccinated and saved from a life-long peril.
It was just then that the call for night prayer went off the loud speaker and the people began moving towards the mosque. Taking this as a God-given opportunity, he too moved into the mosque, offered his devotions and prayed fervently to Allah to guide him properly. Now that his mind was at peace, as if with some divine guidance, he started the campaign afresh. Called on the Imam seeking his help once again. The Imam rather apologised for his ineffectiveness because the rowdies would not listen to him or any one as they were sold to the idea that the whole exercise was being made as a contrivance of the anti-muslim government to annihilate their future generations.
The vaccinators were asked to retire to a shop verandah for a while and asked the shop keeper to supply them with tea and biscuits. He took Sr. Moina Begum aside and gave her some instructions. Collecting a vaccine box and taking Dr. Agrawal by hand, he moved straight over to the rowdies at the mouth of the gully. Well, they would not allow them to proceed.
The leader of the group was even prepared to hit them with a club. Stopping him with a hand, Dr. Amanullah asked him to cool down and talk over the matter. If he or his fellow men still felt that there was something fishy they were at liberty to refuse to vaccinate their children. It took a few minutes of persuasion to make them agree to talk.
Repeating the same sermon which he had made at the Friday prayer, he told them that they had no right to deny the right of others to information. All that he wanted was for the parents to listen to him, understand him and decide on their own.
"No one who believes in letting the children to be paralyzed can be the real friend of the community. He or she will only create a community of the crippled. Will Allah love to have a large community of the crippled individuals in preference to a small healthy one?"
He then narrated the painful stories of the crippled girls of mature age crawling in the village roads, after the death of their parents, uncared for and even molested, in certain parts of their own state of Uttar Pradesh. Their attention was forcibly drawn to the death of the girl in their neighbouring village of Naipura.
Wisdom dawned on some and they wanted to hear the truth. His dress, the beard, the urdu language and quotations from Qur'an slowly got on them.
The casette containing statements made by the Shahi Imam of Delhi was played and the posters with his picture and statement were exhibited and distributed. Though some did not want to rely upon the Shahi Imam, as he belonged a different denomination, they were more inclined to listen to Dr. Amanullah as a 'brother' from a far away state. The fact that he had just finished the prayers along with their folks and that his native state, Kerala, where the Muslim League is a power-determinant and where children, irrespective of their parents' religious beliefs, had been given the same vaccine, is free from Polio came very handy for him to drive in some confidence.
There were, still, a few unconvincible nuts, hard to crack. When he found the tension dissolving slowly, Dr. Amanullah put forth a proposition to allow those who were willing, to have their children vaccinated. With murmurs a few people volunteered to come forward. That was a golden opportunity to catch. The Imam was asked to inaugurate the vaccination which he gladly did. Four of the volunteers with Dr. Agrawal and the Imam were asked to move in and ask each householder and the lady at home if they would have the child vaccinated and to give them two drops if only they wanted. There was no compulsion or application of force. While this exercise was going on another team of four vaccinators with Sr. Moina Begum moved into the crowd of the children who were enthusiastically watching the scene and started dispensing the vaccine to their demanding and wide open mouths before the resistant parents could move upto them. They were furious, no doubt, but the children had already consumed the drops and the popular support was not forthcoming any longer.
The women at home were not prepared to take the risk of their sons and daughters crawling in the muddy gullies, maimed or paralyzed for life – uncared for.
Dr. Amanullah had been watching the progress walking slowly beside the houses, a middle aged lady with her head and face securely covered by a colourful shawl approached him. "Moulana Saheb, my daughter gave birth to a baby last evening. The lady over there says there is no harm giving the drops to the baby. Please tell her not to insist. I don't want to risk the child."
Dr. Amanullah looked up. It was Moina Begum at the other end.
"Madame, there is no harm actually."
"Will you then give it with your own hands ?"
"With pleasure."
He went upto the drawing room of the house and asked for some water to wash his hands. The father of the baby, a handsome young man, brought him soap, water and a towel. He poured him the water at the basin. Dr. Amanullah then took the baby in his hands and gave the azaan (the prayer call) into his ears. He then prayed for the long life and prosperity of the child and gave it to the young man. He took a new dropper from Moina Begum and carefully put two little drops on the parted lips, saying "he will be ever grateful to all of us for saving him from a permanent peril".
It took more than four hours and some six hundred children were given two to four drops each; no tally sheets and no finger marking – they had only to see that every child they came across had the two miraculous drops.
The total expense as checked out later, was 120 vials (2,400drops). That meant, many children above five years might have taken the vaccine, and quite a few would have consumed more than two drops. When they broke off at half past one there were some fifteen to twenty households left out and the local ANMs knew that they contained at least 100 eligible kids, which they could handle. That was for the next day.
The dramatic move and spreading through the narrow bylane by the vaccinators was a sight to see to believe. But for the sharp shooter, Dr. Agarwal, and the team of handpicked dedicated vaccinators the impossible would not have happened.
"Thank you Doctor, your precise method of tearing the hearts and arousing the feelings of the parents for their children gave us the confidence to rush in and we really became unconcerned about the sticks and the rods the rowdies still held in their hands" Dr. Agrawal reacted to his compliments to him and the team, as they were sipping the midnight tea.
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