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Muslim parents deny polio drops to male kids
KENDRAPARA The extended pulse polio immunisation drive has brought to the fore an exceedingly disturbing trend of gender bias prevalent in a remote and predominantly Muslim inhabited village in Kendrapara district. After a sizeable chunk of parents in Tendakuda village under Patkura police limits skipped the 21 May mass immunisation campaign and refused to let their children be administered with oral drops, a door-to-door campaign to cover the left-out children is presently underway.But the exercise has brought in fresh problems with shocking reports of parents protecting the male children from immunisation. After much coaxing and persuasion, we immunised some left-out girl children. But the parental attitude was defiant as far as immunising the male progeny was concerned, said an officer of family welfare wing of the District Headquarters Hospital. The belief that vaccine would turn the children impotent once they grow up still holds its sway in the village though many have realised the folly after an awareness campaign was carried out in the past three days. The riverside Tendakuda is a typical village with more than two third of its residents being from the minority community. Paradoxically, the Muslim families scared of oral doses for children are financially well off with quite a few adult male members making their way to Gulf countries. Initially our attempts failed with many defiantly saying no to polio drops. Later, some of them relented. But they agreed to let their daughters be given oral doses, narrated an official. The idea was to protect the male child from possible impotency factor. Of course, the left-out male children were covered. But girls outnumbered the boys. The immunisation campaign would go on for few more days and we are trying to scale down the number of left-out children, said the officials. A total of 234 children from 0-5 age-group have so far been administered the oral polio doses. Still, over a hundred infants have gone uncovered. Tendakuda is a large village with a population of over 5,000. We are visibly worried over these developments because of the fact that superstitions on polio drops still reign supreme in the village. Many believe that the growing up process of the children would be retarded by the oral drop, while other feel it will lead to impotency. Posted by: ryuge 2006-05-29 |
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