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The Rotary India Dream Team
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As the world awaits
the fulfilment of Rotary’s promise of total eradication of the
polio virus from planet Earth, a few states in India are
among the last bastions of this crippling disease.
Since 2008, our
Rotary India Dream Teams have gone right into the heart of the
Mewat District in the state of Haryana. The focus is on
the villages of Pinagua, Tair, Punahana and Bisroo, where the
latest polio cases had been reported as recently as January
2010, and where large sections of the local population still
resist all efforts to get them to bring their children to the
polio booths. |
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The Rotary India
Dream Team - India Nov. 2010
will
participate in a Polio NID (National Immunization Day) on Sunday
Nov. 14, 2010. Our participation will be in the Mewat district
(Haryana).*
The trip also offers a grand panorama of the fabulous art and
sculpture that this ancient civilization has produced. It also
presents many of the amazing, colourful facets of life on the
streets and in the countryside that make up the ever-changing,
ever-lasting kaleidoscope of India.
There will be time to explore remote villages and to make
friends with colourful village people. The puckish humour and
simple poetry of their lilting music and dance are a highlight
of this trip.
In "Royal Rajasthan ", erstwhile princes still live in
splendour, and peasants still bow to the descendants of their
former rulers. Rajasthan retains the Romance of Rajputana: in
its magnificent palaces, lakes and gardens, in royal hunting
grounds that are now wildlife sanctuaries, and in the proud
bearing and colourful dress of village folk who retain the
rustic grace of their ancestors. |
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*Additional notes on
Mewat and NID activities:
The Mewat area where we shall be going is not covered by any
Rotary district. The Rotary Club of Delhi Megapolis (which this
group will join as a team) is the only Rotary club to have
supported any polio NID activity in this area, which we do in
close collaboration with the Rotary India PolioPlus committee,
WHO officials and the Mewat district Surgeon General, Chief
Medical Officer etc. The reason we have gone so far afield is
because this area is a real hotbed for the polio virus because
of extreme local illiteracy and prejudices, and the district
medical authorities need all the help they can get to promote
the vaccinations.
The NID activities planned include street to street, village to
village campaigning a day before the NID, and then manning the
vaccine booths in pairs the following morning, in one of the
worst affected areas in India. The focus is very high on
targeting the most backward, most resistant populations where
the virus is most rampant. As the booths are thickly spread out
in these villages, the number of children coming up to any one
booth is not as concentrated as, say, a booth in the heart of a
slum area in Delhi - but the need for our effort is far greater
here than in Delhi. |
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