A million contagions now

Just when India thought it was on the brink of eradicating polio comes news that the virus is in resurgent mode. Worse, WHO now says that India is exporting polio to South Asian and African countries. What went wrong in India’s polio eradication initiative, which was considered one of the most successful in the world?

The answer probably lies in our bureaucratic penchant for unrealistic targets. This is clear from health minister Anbumani Ramadoss’s latest statement that India will now eliminate the disease by 2007. As a medical doctor, the minister should know that diseases don’t always vanish according to official targets.

Viruses have the capacity to overpower even vaccines and medication. Even after signs that polio was on the retreat, health officials should have been alert to the possibility that it could make a comeback. The type of polio called acute flaccid paralysis is now on the increase in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Worse, it has also affected children who have been vaccinated. With large-scale migration to other states from these two, it is spreading to other polio-free states like Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, to mention a few. 

While we are faced with this virulent polio outbreak, Ramadoss has declared the successful elimination of yaws, a contagious and disfiguring skin disease that affect children below the age of five in tribal areas.

Ramadoss has set 2008 as the magical figure in which the disease will be proclaimed as totally eradicated. Can we rest assured that a contagious disease is eradicated in areas where health and sanitation facilities are non-existent? Of course not. But health officials will wake up to that fact only when it is too late.

Ramadoss ought to be a very worried man. Even as he expends his energies to fighting smoking on the big screen and cleaning up the administration of AIIMS, a rare viral fever ‘chikungunya’ has come back 32 years after its last outbreak.

Only constant surveillance can avert the spread of any contagious disease. India does not do this with any consistency and this is why we top the charts in all infectious diseases from TB to encephalitis. We lose millions of dollars in tourist revenues because people are scared of coming here.

Millions of Indians are rendered unproductive because of infectious ailments. Treating the symptoms from time to time won’t do. We need to look at long-term remedies. And stop setting unrealistic targets to eradicate these diseases.