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Sabrang Team
|
UNICEF's
ANTI-POLIO CAMPAIGN AMONG MUSLIMS IN U.P.
(October 2004)
Yoginder Sikand
Uttar Pradesh enjoys the dubious distinction of being the world's
epicentre of polio, accounting for almost 70% of the reported cases
of the dreaded disease in the world. The virus appears to be fast
spreading from western UP to other parts of the state and to other
states of the country as well, threatening to re-introduce polio to
regions that for some years have been free of the disease.
According to a recently survey report published by UNICEF, titled
'When Every Child Counts: Engaging the Undeserving Communities for
Polio Eradtion in Uttar Pradesh, India', UP's Muslims are
particularly vulnerable to polio. Although Muslims form around a
fifth of the state's population they accounted for almost 70% o the
polio cases in 2002. This owes to a variety of factors, including
high levels of illiteracy, rampant poverty, poor unhygienic living
conditions, and inadequate state-provided health facilities in
Muslim areas. To add to this is a marked reluctance among many
Muslims to vaccinate their children, fearing that the polio vaccine
being administered to them might be deliberately adulterated in
order to render their children infertile as part of an alleged
conspiracy to control Muslim population growth.
In order to tackle the polio problem among the Muslims of the
western districts of UP, in mid-2003 UNICEF formulated a new
strategy of reaching out to the community through Muslim community
activists, involving a range of Muslim institutions in its programme.
Three universities, the Jamia Millia Islamia, the Hamdard University
and the Aligarh Muslim University, were roped in to provide
institutional support, to train community workers to engage in
advocacy and outreach work, and to plan, implement and monitor the
anti-polio campaign in western UP. Nine districts in the region with
a high concentration of Muslims were selected for the initial phase
of the project: Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Baghpat,
Moradabad, Bijnore, Bulandshahr, Ghaziabad and Aligarh.
The campaign adopted a multi-pronged approach, using different means
to get its message across. UNICEF assisted the Aligarh Muslim
University's Medical College to run two health clinics in high-risk
localities in Aligarh town. This was supplemented by monthly health
camps and outreach services in Aligarh. Several students and
teachers of the Aligarh Muslim University visited various Muslim
localities to promote awareness, through door-to-door visits, plays
and street dramas, about the need for people to vaccinate their
children against polio.
In cooperation with UNICEF the Jamia Millia Islamia developed an
innovative approach to community health, by seeking to involve
influential Muslim religious leaders in the anti-polio campaign. The
Unit for the Study of Innovations in Development, part of the
Jamia's Social Work Department, developed an advocacy booklet in
Urdu that quoted verses from the Qur'an to urge parents to vaccinate
their children. It conducted a series of workshops with 'ulama
associated with madrasas in order to convince them of the urgency of
the campaign and to get them involved in it. The Jamia's Department
of Islamic Studies sent scholars to sensitise local religious
leaders about the importance of the issue. Several madrasas,
including such influential ones as the Dar ul-'Ulum, Deoband and the
Mazahir ul-'Ulum, Saharanpur, are said to have extended their
cooperation, issuing appeals to Muslims after Friday prayers to
inoculate their children against polio.
The UNICEF report speaks about the untapped potential of the
madrasas, arguing that, given their influence, they can play a very
crucial role in promoting community health. In this regard, it
discusses the possibility of introducing health and immunization as
a component of the madrasa curriculum. This task, it says, is one
that institutions such as the Jamia Millia Islamia are best equipped
to initiate, given their close links with the community. In addition
to this, various other Muslim religious and community organisations
can also be made to take an active role in community health
awareness. According to the report, the UNICEF, through the Jamia
Millia Islamia, has established an informal link with the All-India
Milli Council, a national forum of 'ulama and Muslim activists, to
promote its health campaign. It refers to a member of the Council,
Maulana Abdullah Mughisi, as something of a model in this regard,
praising his efforts to promote the anti-polio campaign through his
Frid
Despite the close involvement of Muslim community activists and
religious leaders in the campaign, suspicions and fears remain and
are difficult to dispel. The report quotes Khalid Zabir Dahr, a
Unani doctor from Muzaffarnagar, as saying, 'There is no short-cut.
I have to explain and reassure people that there's no government
agenda to control the growth of Muslim population. I went
door-to-door, sometimes taking my own children and giving them polio
drops in front of suspicious parents'. 'Many Muslims', says Aftab
Ali, a Muslim doctor from Meerut also involved in the campaign,
'took the infertility rumours seriously'. 'Due to their bitter
experience with family planning as well as some kind of minority
complex, they felt threatened', he explains.
UNICEF has also entered into a partnership with Jamia Hamdard, New
Delhi, which has a well-known department of Unani medicine and a
network of Unani practitioners among its alumni in western UP. As
part of this collaborative exercise, UNICEF plans to organise with
the Jamia Hamdard a series of training workshops for Unani
physicians, chemists, National Service Scheme volunteers and local
religious leaders. In March 2004, along with the Jamia Hamdard, the
UNICEF supported a national convention on community health that was
organised by the Milli Council at a madrasa in Meerut, which was
attended by several thousand delegates from UP and elsewhere.
The report claims that because of the innovative approach that
UNICEF has adopted in its anti-polio campaign, in particular the
involvement of local Muslim community and religious leaders and
religious institutions, the incidence of polio has considerably
declined in UP. This community-based initiative could well serve as
a model for other welfare schemes for marginalized communities. It
could also serve, one could add, as a source of inspiration for the
promotion of a more socially engaged Muslim religious leadership,
one that is in tune with and sensitive to the practical, real-life
problems of 'ordinary' people.
The report can be procured from:
The Regional Adviser
Programme Communication
UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia
PO Box 5815, Lekhnath Marg
Kathmandu, Nepal
Email:
[email protected] |