Jonathan Stevens of Usk Rotary decided at 72 that he would volunteer for the Polio Immunisation Day in India, working in the slums of Delhi, an incredible experience.
IN INDIA
The poverty and living conditions were terrible, and seeing the extremely challenging hygiene conditions in the slums, it is staggering how much has already been achieved in defeating Polio and other diseases in India. This is his story.
I saw the general requests for volunteers for the India National Immunisation Day (NID) sent out to all clubs by Mike Yates of Buxton Rotary. I responded, as a rather late volunteer, because I was planning to go out to Singapore to see my son who now lives and works there, and thought that I could combine the two trips.
I thought that the NID, would be valuable and interesting work, although the thought of working in the slums of Delhi was a little daunting! We ended up as a total party of between 80 and 90 going out from the UK, but there were Rotarians from a number of other countries also there to help. We met Rotarians from, Australia, Japan, and USA among others.
The task was huge - I understand that there were 700,000 booths set up around the whole of India, and I was assigned to one in the outskirts of Delhi. This was in a very poor area, but I now hesitate to describe it as a slum, because the conditions were quite civilised compared to the living conditions we saw the following day. We were taken to the booth by Indian Rotarians - but they were frankly rather arrogant, and had no intention of doing any work (apart from administering a single dose for the purpose of a photo opportunity), and left us to get on with the job. It was a little galling that we had gone to considerable personal expense, and travelled a long way, to help - and there were plenty of Indian Rotarians,who seemed perfectly capable of doing the job - but were simply not prepared to do so! On the Friday after we arrived, we attended a rally at a school in the suburbs with the objective of publicising the NID which was due to take place on the Sunday. Then on the Sunday we spent the day manning a “booth” that had been set up by local Rotarians, and frantically trying to deal with hordes of local children who had turned up (largely out of curiosity) and gave them all the required two drops of vaccine, and then marked the little finger of their left hand with indelible purple die, so that we could check who still had to be given a dose - each child was given a small gift (perhaps a pencil or a balloon), and it was amazing how many came round for a second try!
After running out of children to vaccinate in the late afternoon, we went to the local organising centre which was in the neighbourhood maternity clinic - that seemed quite organised, and staffed by very dedicated women - but in terms of Western hygiene, it was quite stag- gering that you had to step across a foul smelling open sewer to enter the front door.
The following day we went on a mopping up exercise to find children who had not attended a booth on the day. I was sent, with one other volunteer, and a local health worker into an area that really was a slum. The housing consisted of single rooms each measuring about 8
x 6 feet or thereabouts, stacked three high in many places, and opening out onto a “lane” which was no more than a passageway about 3 feet wide (and in places so narrow that you had to squeeze through side on. Access to the upper rooms was by a bamboo ladder. We spent many hours in this slum, and found about 80 children who had not been vaccinated the day before - so this did seem like a valuable exercise and very worthwhile - we felt we had done something useful. And there is no way that the Indian Rotarians would have ever ventured into such a place!
After this activity, while we were in India, we were also taken to see other Rotary projects, including a Blood Bank set up and funded by Rotary, and the Jaipur Limb Centre - again a Rotary project, where amputees are fitted with artificial limbs made at the hospital using relatively cheap and simple materials/methods.
Top, polio immunisation. Above, Jaipur Limb Centre. Right, the publicity rally, drumming up trade
Overall, I found the whole experience very rewarding, and felt that we had made a contribution to the End Polio campaign. Jonathan
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