SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE NATIONAL ORIENTATION PROGRAM ON 19Th DECEMBER 2020 LET US CREATE HISTORY AGAIN.
10 years ago, Rotarians of India, helped create history. A large, highly populated, diverse country like ours is polio free, since Jan 2011 – a monumental achievement.
This incredible success was due to a seamless partnership between the Govt. of India, WHO, UNICEF, CDC, The Rotary Foundation and Gates Foundation. Each of these partners excelled in their allotted role.
Since then, Rotary has taken on other challenges including Measles and Rubella, about which my esteemed colleagues have already spoken.
Let me remind you that the four pillars of polio eradication were:
1. National and Sub-national Immunization days. 2. Outbreak response. 3. Surveillance of possible cases of polio. 4. Routine Immunization. All these years, the fourth pillar, Routine Immunization, seems to have not received its due importance.
Routine Immunization, has however become the most important way of not only keeping our children free from Polio, but also from other diseases which affect children very commonly.
If every child gets polio vaccine in Routine Immunization a time will come when NID & SNID will not be necessary.
It’s a dream for India and let me assure that this dream will come to a reality. Already Sri Lanka, Maldives, Bhutan have controlled these diseases. We can do that too. All we need is the WILL to do so.
Years of work on polio has brought some major benefits. Our health sector, human resource is trained and can easily be redeployed for injectable vaccines.
Our infrastructure such as cold chain, transport is in place all-over India and the immense experience that we have gathered will stand us in good stead in the future.
Govt. & WHO, have the knowledge of high risk and vulnerable areas. Each and every child in our country gets identified and record of routine immunization is well maintained.
Areas of resistance to immunization, areas of low immunization coverage, are well documented.
Friends, we now have three major goals to be achieved …
A) Routine Immunization System & services are to be strengthened
B) Measles is to be eliminated and Rubella to be controlled
C) Polio Free status to be maintained
We are now faced with 2 major obstacles in this campaign.
The first is coverage of Routine Immunisation in India. The average coverage remains unsatisfactory. Govt. of India had launched a special program called Mission Indradhanush to increase the coverage. This was followed by a Clarion call by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi to raise the coverage to more than 90 % .
As an official partner of Govt. of India in this effort, it is Rotary’s duty is to create awareness of Routine Immunization.
Increasing the Routine Immunization coverage will not only keep India Polio Free but also has a potential to eliminate Tetanus, Rubella, Measles etc.
The second obstacle is Resistance to vaccination in certain pockets of the population.
The tipping point in the drive to eradicate polio was the formation of the Muslim Ulema Committee which helped us overcome resistance from the Muslim community.
We are confident that the excellent rapport built during the Polio campaign will serve us well in the future too.
However I am a bit alarmed by a new force that has gathered strength in recent years. That is the Fake News Industry.
Vested interests take undue advantage of social media to create panic and uncertainty in the minds of people.
Even educated people are now falling victim to the spate of unscientific and baseless information being spread by this industry.
This fake news spreads like wildfire and creates unnecessary hurdles in the vaccination process.
The Government of India is advised by the best brains from the scientific and medical community. The vaccinations are the result of a lot of dedicated research, development and testing.
Your ability to create awareness, minimize resistance, take proactive actions and above all … your selfless volunteerism is unparallelled.
Let us join hands with Govt. to create history – yet another historical achievement awaits us.
Friends, India stands on the threshold of another gigantic task, off vaccinating 1.4 billion people with the Covid Vaccine.
This pandemic has caused worldwide havoc with public health, economic wealth and social harmony. Yet, despite all the odds, humanity is fighting back with all its intelligence and ingenuity.
For the first time in history, a vaccine has been developed within a year of the outbreak of a disease.
While the Govt. of India is ready with its blueprint for Covid Vaccination Rotary has offered its hand of partnership, to ensure that every Indian can walk free of Covid, forever.
What is needed is your commitment – your hands and your heart. This is when every Rotarian can be part of a miracle. Let us create history again.
(A few Urdu Couplets to be added in between.)
19 December 2020