ADDRESS BY SHRI K.R. NARAYANAN, VICE PRESIDENT OF INDIA, ON THE OCCASION OF POLIO UNMOOLAN PLEDGE CEREMONY

NEW DELHI, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1994          

May I, at the outset, congratulate the Government of the National Capital Territory, Delhi, particularly the Chief Minister and the Minister of Health, for the Polio Pulse Immunization Programme that they are launching. By initiating this programme based on a new strategy to eradicate polio from the face of this historic capital, Delhi is blazing a new trail for the whole country to follow.

You, Mr. Chief Minister, are launching this programme at a critical moment. The outbreak of plague in Surat has shown that some of the dreaded communicable diseases, which we thought we had wiped out from this land, could stage a come-back unless we are eternally vigilant. The government, the medical profession, the scientists, doctors, nurses and other paramedical staff have to work together with the representatives of the people, non-governmental organisations, teachers, students and the general public, if we are to overcome the danger to public health that we are facing. I am glad that what we are inaugurating is a well thought-out mass action programme to conquer polio in immunizing one million children in Delhi. It is social mobilisation for health care, mobilisation of people's power for better health for our children. We in India have always loved children. Children are the most precious asset of our nation. The future of our nation is in their delicate hands. They are tender and beautiful like flowers, but they are even more fragile and helpless than flowers. We have to take care of them and protect them for the multitude of dangers to which they are exposed in our society, disease, mal-nutrition and exploitation of various kinds.

Polio which afflicts million of our children is a preventible disease. The World health Organisation has aimed at wiping out polio from the face of the earth by 2000 A.D. India is a party to that noble and ambitious plan. About 116 countries including many developing countries have already succeeded in eradicating polio from their midst. But we have lagged behind in spite of the fact that 85% of our children below 5-years of age -- over 110 million in number, have been immunized against polio. To-day 50% of polio cases in the world are in India, out of which 10% is in Delhi itself. Obviously our strategy in dealing with the disease has not been effective. It is in this context that the Delhi programme and the strategy on which it is based is noteworthy. The strategy of mass immunization, the pulse strategy, has helped many developed and developing countries in eradicating the menace of polio. It is heartening, Mr. Chief Minister, that your government has adopted this strategy and is launching a mass movement to eradicate polio by 2000 A.D. as envisaged by W.H.O. The success of this campaign would depend on participation of the entire community in it and the coverage of the entire territory of Delhi. It has to be a total war against this virus. Polio virus, like that of any other disease, does not discriminate between people on religious, caste or political grounds.

Hence this is a movement in which all can and ought to participate for their own sake as well as for the sake of the larger society. In this campaign we will have to cover every part of the territory of Delhi and every section of the community. The polio immunization must particularly cover the slums of Delhi where millions of people live in squalor and unhygienic conditions, and which are the breeding grounds for all manner of diseases and their viruses. I am glad that the Government of Delhi is giving special attention to this in their campaign. Ultimately slums and good public health cannot go together. Therefore I appreciate the programme of the Delhi Government to clean up the city. Cleaning up and good sanitation is indispensable for eradicating and in preventing communicable diseases.

You are launching the polio immunization programme on the 125th birth-day of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhiji was a politician for whom constructive work and educating, arousing, and mobilising the m asses were the substance of politics. He attached great importance to sanitation work. He once said that sanitation is the first step in constructive work. He elaborated his view and I quote "I hold that where the rules of personal, domestic and public sanitation are strictly observed and due care is taken in the matter of diet and exercise, there should be no occasion for illness or disease". While we use modern science and medicine for eradicating polio and other communicable diseases from our midst, this statement of Gandhiji on personal and public health must be borne in mind. As a people we have yet to appreciate fully the importance of personal and environmental hygiene in individual land public health.

We also have yet to appreciate that the existence of poverty and the explosion of population growth are a perpetual threat to the health and happiness of our people. Vaccines and drugs are indispensable in dealing with diseases. We must master uptodate technologies for manufacturing high quality drugs and vaccines, but must understand the most viruses and most diseases originate from our life-styles and the conditions of our living. A great British authority on public health and medicine observed: "The most important medical advance of the nineteenth century was the discovery that infectious diseases were largely attributable to environmental conditions and could often be prevented by control of the influences which led to them; the most important advance in the 20th century is the recognition that the same is true of non-communicable diseases."

The experience of Europe shows cholera was brought under control by hygienic measures years before the causal organism of the disease was discovered in 1883 by Koch. Tuberculosis declined in Europe in the 19th century largely due to the rise in the living and nutritional standards of the people following the Industrial Revolution. Even vaccination against small-pox was the result of empirical techniques developed prior to the knowledge of immunology. To-day advances in the science and practice of immunology have placed in our hands the means of eradicating communicable diseases. But they cannot be fully successful unless accompanied by public health and hygienic measures. Without these the viruses of communicable diseases tend to reappear with devastating consequences. with millions of people living in poverty, squalor, and unhealthy and unhygienic conditions our fight against viruses cannot succeed as has been demonstrated again and again. Unless we are able to get rid of the slums - I am told there are three cities in Delhi today, Old Delhi, New Delhi and Slum Delhi -- our fight against communicable diseases will remain a losing battle, in spite of the best modern vaccines that we may acquire. Besides, can the health problem of Delhi be tackled in isolation? India and the Indian sub-continent are the major reservoir of polio viruses in the world. Delhi cannot be completely polio-free unless the rest of India also is free from this deadly virus. Therefore, I hope that the campaign you have launched in Delhi to wipe out polio, will be followed by the rest of India without delay. Let this campaign be a contagious one and infect the whole of India. May I wish you every success in your noble mission?.

Thank you.