Q & A: How India Stopped Polio

This interview was conducted to mark the anniversary of a polio milestone in India: 2 years without reporting a single case of polio. To learn more about the strategies that led to this accomplishment, including communication strategies, Eric Porterfield talked with Jeffrey Bates, a Polio C4D Officer (Communication for Development) at one of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) partner organisations, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Bates explains that, along with looking into population gaps (missed children), UNICEF focused on communication and media to build momentum and foster public embrace of the initiative. For example, Indian film actor Amitabh Bachchan participated in public service announcements (PSAs) which were broadcast through mass media. Also, social mobilisers and partnerships with key institutions "helped us reach a critical mass where refusals, which had traditionally been a key barrier in many places in India, dwindled to the point where they were almost nonexistent."

He also highlights the importance of local ownership, describing the "107 block plan", which, beginning in 2008, looked at the highest-risk blocks for polio and sought to understand how the polio initiative could integrate with other services (water/sanitation, safe water handling, hand washing, etc.) that the community cared about. This approach "gave the community a feeling that they were doing something locally relevant as opposed to something that maybe the federal or state governments were asking them to do."

Porterfield asked Bates: "Unless polio is eradicated rapidly from the remaining endemic countries - Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan - it will continue to re-infect polio-free countries. What is India doing to share their success story and effective strategies with these countries?" Bates responded that, for example, staff from both the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF programmes in India have gone on missions to other countries to look at their social mobilisation networks and give them inputs on how to tighten up management, establish monitoring frameworks, and improve training. Personnel, including government personnel, have also gone on study tours to India "as a source of motivation to see how the Indian program has come together under the government and with partners working together toward similar goals and objectives..."

In addition, UNICEF created the India Polio Learning Exchange, a process through which a number of different levels of interaction with polio-affected countries can take place such as through teleconferences, video conferences, and sharing of information - for example, through videos like the one that can be seen below (to view all of these videos, click here). According to Bates, "India has a stockpile of materials and training manuals which they have made available online and can also package and send to countries as needed. We've already been using some of the training materials in Nigeria for their volunteer community mobilizer network."

Looking ahead to 2013 and beyond, Bates notes that the 2012 attacks on polio workers in Pakistan "garnered a lot of media attention, which was an unfortunate way to do it, but the result brought discourse around polio eradication into the public sphere. In 2013, I think we are looking at more intense discussion and country leaders getting involved given that we now only have three polio endemic countries....We're seeing communities get more excited as they realize that progress is being made, and that they might be part of a historic event."