Annual Haj Provides Opportunity for Advocacy

This article was featured in the September 2007 issue of the India Polio Communication Update, a monthly publication put together by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in India. The article describes the efforts of India's polio social mobilisation network (SMNet) to vaccinate and communicate the importance of polio vaccination to tens of thousands of Muslim pilgrims, through the opportunity presented by the largest and most sacred Muslim pilgrimage known as the Haj. Also known as Hajis, these pilgrims travel from India to Saudi Arabia in numbers upwards of 150,000 every year. In advocating with the state Haj committees, India's polio network is working towards both vaccinating mobile populations as well as gaining support for the programme from influential religious figures.

According to this article, in preparation for the October pilgrimage, training sessions for the public were planned to take place at least a month in advance of this. These sessions aimed to inform Hajis of how and where to receive their polio drops and vaccination cards. The polio-endemic state of Uttar Pradeshregistered just under 30,000 Hajis that planned to participate in 2007. The polio SMNet managed to vaccinate 12,000 of these individuals in 2006 and hope that the vaccination awareness campaigns will result in an even higher figure in 2007. Media endorsement and support from the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) for the polio eradication initiative are seen as important tools in gaining public trust for vaccination campaigns.