Getting to Badaun and Bareilly

Today is Rotary's 105^th anniversary (24^th February) and also World Polio Day and therefore it is a particularly fitting day to be setting out to take part in a Polio Immunisation campaign.

After a fitful night's sleep (memo to self: next time come at least a day earlier in order to get over the jet lag before going on duty as a Rotarian), Team Sally (as we later were to call ourselves in honour of our press-ganged leader) assembled in the lobby to meet our guide and to get onto our bus.

Niraz had been assigned to us by the Delhi Polio Office to ensure that all went well and if it did not, to sort it out and also to act as an interpreter whilst we were away in Bereilly and Badaun (pronounced Bad-eye-un).

Although 260 kms away (and ignoring Mappoint which said the journey could be covered in 3 ½ hours), 6 hours were allowed on our official schedule for the trip. In the event it took 7 ¼ hours and we can best describe it as a rapid journey back in time as we left Delhi and its relative sophistication and passed through country side which became increasingly more primitive in terms of transport:

the ubiquitous tuctuc which can be seen in every town

a bogged down tractor pulling an overloaded trailer full of bricks

numerous old steamrollers (usually pink), it would seem that as they went out of use in the UK, they were shipped out to India;

a tricycle taxi;

a tricycle flat bed truck;

a mobile road side stall selling guava ;

a two ox-powered trailer

The shops and general appearance of the towns we went through showed growing poverty the further west we travelled:

 

this type of road side stalls are everywhere and most

 

look like shacks

and many of those in the towns are little better.

 

Badaun is an undistinguished town in a district of the same name in the state of Uttar Pradesh and is about 260 kms east of Delhi. The town seems not to feature in any

guidebook and hence prior to going there, the only information available to me was from the web which told me little other than that the area’s major agricultural products are wheat, paddy, sugarcane, guava and menthol.

One source of information about the area is the 2011 Indian Census which provides some interesting statistics about Badaun District which suggest significant deprivation:

• its population has grown by 20% in the last 10 years;
• the overall literacy rate is 53% (42% female)
• 17% of the population is under 6;
• there are 85 girls for every 100 boys;
• population density is 718 per km²
• the religious profile is 46% Muslim, 51% Hindu.

Badaun is important from a Polio perspective because it is at the crossroads of several highways and so experiences a high population movement from all over Northern India. It is classified as the fifth highest risk district in India mainly because of its transient population but also because the Ganges floods each year. The vaccination programme currently runs all year with at least 10 vaccination programmes for the whole UP district and because of the flooding, it is not unknown for vaccinators to have to walk through deep water carrying all of the tools of their trade on the heads to get to cut off villages – no excuse is accepted because everyone must be vaccinated. The last polio case in the area was in January 2010.

Rotary has a high profile in the area and Rotary finance supports many things including a comic about Polio,

(here are a couple of pages, Rotary is mentioned on Page 2), polio awareness campaigns, Tiffin Boxes in which vaccinators carry their lunch,

and the very small expenses payments given to vaccinators of 120 rupees per day (about £1.60). Many vaccinators are civil servants who are released from their duties during the vaccination period so that they can take part and others are volunteers who receive no pay other than the expenses allowance.

Although our Polio duties are in Badaun, it is deemed by Rotary that there are no suitable hotels in the town (and indeed we did not see any) so we are staying at the Swarn Towers Hotel in Bareilly (population 748,353) which is 52km away. Route mapping software optimistically says that this the drive from Delhi to Bareilly can be

covered in just over 3½ hours – I suspect the software has never driven on roads in India because express coaches currently take 7 hours as does the train. Hence, getting to Bareilly was an adventure in itself and in fact it took nearly 8 hours to get there.

Our lunch stop at a reasonably clean wayside café which

seemed to exist to serve passing Indian travellers was a first introduction to real Indian food and the prices one pays

outside of Delhi and also if one is treated as a local (because we had an Indian guide with us who ensured we were not taken advantage of) rather than a rich foreign tourist.

Lunch is eaten early in India hence 11 am found me eating a Stuffed Kulcha Aloo Onion Mix which was a sort of potato, onion and cheese pancake with a spicy sauce.

Pat had a Barji which was unlike any we had eaten in England – this one a deep fried empty ball of batter which one broke open and filled with a rather spicy dahl mixture

Both we very nice and cost 500 rupees in total including tea / water.

Our driver seemed to navigate without a map and hence we got lost sometime after we crossed the Ganges but

eventually the Hotel Swarn appeared

where we were

 

garlanded on arrival, and we met Shyamji Sharma who is the Polio Coordinator for Delhi and had been assigned to arrange our field work in the area. If you want to know more about the hotel, then the “less than positive but not really awful” grade of reports in TripAdvisor are fairly accurate.

We were told that we were scheduled to drive to Faridpur-Bareilly that evening to meet the Interact group of

Manas Sthali School Interact is sponsored by the Rotary Club of Bareilly. The Interact Club was holding its final meeting of the year and we were considered “honoured guests” and would be presenting graduation awards to those who were leaving the club and the school that year. Approximately half of the school are members of Interact (160 members) and one third were graduating – it seems that Interact membership automatically applies to anyone in the last three years of the school.

The school is a mixed co-educational boarding school (hence fee paying) for around 350 children aged from 7 through to 18 – much of the curriculum is taught in English. Having been admitted to the school by the shotgun brandishing doorman, we met the Headmistress and had our first taste of the formality and procedure which was to become an important part of our time here. It was rapidly evident that we were regarded as honoured guests and we

were welcomed with water then tea and biscuits. We had been warned that refusal of anything we were offered by anyone during our time here as Rotarians was not going to be regarded as polite, particularly if someone ho has nothing goes to the trouble of drawing water from their well, giving you tea or making you something to eat etc. It surprised us how truly pleased they were that we had come to India and it was repeatedly said to everyone we met that if we could take the trouble to come to India to help them out with Polio, then they had a duty to ensure that India was declared Polio Free.

The school was rather stark and bare by OfSTED standards and the children were obviously used to behaving correctly at all times and only speaking when spoken to. Despite this, the appearance of these strange people from England led to numerous faces peering around corners at us and cries of “hello” and great grins if we waved back.

The whole school had been assembled upstairs and after being offered a Tilaka

we were escorted to the front row of the library and the Interact meeting started

with a blessing to the Gods and the proceeded in much the

same format as interact meetings in the UK with reports from the various officers of the club. Then they announced that they had prepared some entertainment for us and there followed three set dances given by groups of students.

The first was a traditional Indian dance done by a group of girls to the theme of “My country is beautiful” which is a traditional Indian folk song

then a Gangland Style dance

then a traditional Punjabi dance done by a group of boys.

Our appointed team leader (Sally – President of Brue

Valley Rotary Club) was asked to present trophies to each of the 60 graduating students and then we were formally garlanded by members of the school, we presented club banners to

each other, we exchanged gifts (we were given rather beautiful shawls)

and we were invited to meet the

members of the club who seemed very interested in teaching us some Hindi phrases and also hearing our views on Indian cricket and whom I thought was the world’s best cricketer – in their view there was only one valid answer!

We had a quick tour of parts of the school which was very

stark, clean and tidy (above are the girls Dormitories) on the way down to supper during

which we were taught the one handed method (right hand)

of folding a chapatti and using it to eat Dahl and other dishes.

An interesting evening and a good introduction to the next few days.

Travelling to Delhi

First get your visa

As with many things related to India, complications abound with anything which could be simple – such as getting a visa. It used to be the case that you could go to India House in London (or one of their other centres), fill in a form, attach a photograph, pay a fee, hand over your passport, go for a long cup of coffee and when you came back, your passport was ready with its visa. Alternatively you filled a form, sent your passport to India House with some money and in due course it came back with a visa.

Now if you are applying for your visa by post (as we did), the new simplified, improved customer experience service required us to:

• have two non-standard size (USA or India size) passport photographs taken to a very tight specification;
• locate, complete and print-off three separate forms from different web addresses;
• go to another web address to pay the fee which includes the visa fee, an embassy surcharge fee, a fee to a processing agency; a fee for notification of how our application was progressing, a return postage fee and then print off proof of payment for inclusion with our papers;
• go to a post office and send off our passports in a special delivery envelope (if you are sending off two passports, you need two envelopes)
• wait up to two weeks for our passports to be returned (assuming we filled in the forms correctly)
• be in when our passports were returned because we had to sign for them.

or alternatively if you live near one of their visa application centres:

• fill in one form online at home and print it off
• make a booking for an interview time online if you want to (very useful but not essential)
• go to a Visa Centre (where they will accept credit card payments).
• the centre staff will check that you have filled in the form correctly and calculate the fee
• then up to two passports with visas will be returned in one envelope for a fee of £7.40 (2013) provided they are not mixed business and tourist visas.

The total cost for us was about £60 per passport, alternatively you can pay a specialist agency around £130 to deal with some of the above for you but you still have to have photographs taken, fill in the forms and get your passport to the agency. A neighbour used a specialist agency for her tourist visa a few months before us and did not seem to get any better service (nor any less worry!)

Although seemingly complicated, the process was relatively easy to do however the fear of making a critical mistake was present throughout. It was with some relief therefore that we welcomed our passports back with their new tourist visas some 10 days after sending them off.

We calculated that the additional cost in time and train fares of going to a visa application centre was far more than the cost and worry of applying by post.

Insurance and Health

We are travelling using our own travel insurance policy since we have 12 month world wide cover. Had we not had our own, then the Rotary insurance cover offer would have been good value. Prior to going, we topped up our immunisations (which are quite comprehensive in any case) with Hep B which requires a number of injections over a couple of months and a booster one year later. We packed some disposable latex gloves just in case we needed them whilst dispensing the vaccine and took a couple of spare bottles of water just in case there is a difficulty in getting obviously pure and untainted bottled water locally (there is a thriving business in selling on dubiously refilled bottles to unsuspecting travellers). Taking hand disinfectant and disinfectant wipes is of course standard practice for anyone going to India as is extreme care about what you eat and drink.

Taking Toys

Rotarians are encouraged to take about 200 small toys each with them, one to be given to any child who is vaccinated. We were very strongly advised only to take things like balloons, pencils, biros, tooth brushes, etc and absolutely nothing of value. Because if we give a child a present which is “valuable”, then the next time they go to a booth to be vaccinated they will expect to get the same and that is unlikely to be the case and then problems occur.

We found out (a little too late) that pencils can be purchased unsharpened and it took some time to sharpen many of our 268 pencils since there is no point giving an unsharpened pencil to a small child in a slum where they may not have ever have owned a pencil let alone a pencil sharpener. I can state quite categorically that there is an industrial injury called “Rotarian pencil sharpener’s finger” and we both now suffer from it!

We also took a few pocket English dictionaries because we were given them by a friend who had heard that schools there are desperate for English dictionaries.

Everyone of our 268 pencils, 42 pens, 15 toothbrushes, 6 dictionaries, and 400 balloons were donated either by fellow Rotarians or by friends. The only thing we purchased was the pencil sharpener!

Travelling arrangements

Although not compulsory, we chose to purchase our plane tickets, book hotels etc through the travel agency which Rotary suggest one uses. This meant that we benefited from group rate discounts for flights and hotels and we do not have to negotiate the potentially complex process of getting to and from Delhi Airport to our Hotel – Delhi airport can be chaotic at the best of times and will feel worse after an overnight flight.

After the NID, we are taking advantage of the fact that we are in India and going on to Darjeeling and Kolkata for a few days. The total cost (2013 prices) of getting to India for the NID plus our add-ons was around £3500 for two. Because single supplements are quite expensive, the travel agency offer a pairing service to sole Rotarians who are willing to share rooms.

Travelling to India

And so a dark and cold Thursday evening in late February

finds us on the train and tube on our way to Heathrow Terminal 3 to meet the 65 other Rotarians taking part in this NID who are mostly flying out as a group to Delhi with Virgin Atlantic. (I am not asleep in this picture, just crouching down a bit to try to fit into where I think the camera is taking the picture!)

Check-in was straight forward (since we had done the bulk of it on-line before hand and we had managed to change our seats so that we were sitting together, the plane was

full to the brim and left on time.

The route was the usual one to India, there were some films to watch as the 8½ hours slowly passed, on-board food was worse than the usual barely acceptable standard and sleep was scarce! In other words, no surprises for anyone used to the back of the plane. After a rather bumpy flight, Delhi arrived on schedule

Delhi Airport Terminal 3 is a new addition since our last visit to Delhi in 2006 and proved to be a little less chaotic than the terminal it replaced. The queue though passport control took about 35 minutes and our bags were waiting for us on the belt when we got to it.

There were about 30 Rotarians on this flight, when we were assembled, we headed off to a coach and were presented

with a symbolic Marigold Garland to celebrate our arrival.

Pat would wish you to know that had she known she was going to get this garland, she would have worn a jumper whose colour does not clash with the marigolds!

Reassuringly (or perhaps terrifyingly), Delhi traffic has not changed since we were last here. You will note the four lanes of traffic in the above photograph (we are in the fifth lane). This is in fact a three lane road and the sides of most vehicles bare the scars of being squeezed through gaps which are not there! We know from the last time that we were here that if you are driving down a two lane road (one in each direction), you should assume it is at least a four lane road,sometimes all coming towards you and that road markings are irrelevant.

Our Hotel was the Royal Plaza Delhi – not one of the world’s great hotels. Once our luggage had been found (half was delivered to the wrong room and only found after a very anxious wait), there was a short briefing on our role

in the NID, a presentation on the current position of polio in the country (and more generally throughout the world) and the timetable for the next few days.

We also met Rotarian Mike Yates who has done much over the past years to enable Rotarians from the UK and many other countries to take part in Polio Immunisations here – our group comprises a large contingent from the UK plus some from Australia, Belgium and Ireland. Thank you Mike.

We then received our briefing packs which contained (amongst other things), some bright yellow T-Shirts stating what we were here to do and an even brighter yellow hi-viz jacket.

Throughout the NID we are told to wear these yellow jackets and shirts not only so that we can be seen by the local population but so that we can see each other in the crowds. In the pack were examples of the literature used in India to educate the masses about Polio. One of these is a cartoon book for children

And so to bed (as Zebedee would have said) for a rather jet lagged and restless night with an 8 am scheduled departure for Bareilly awaiting us.

Rotary and Polio in India

This and the next four blog entries record our participation as Rotarians in the National Immunisation Day (NID) in India in February 2013. They are written with fellow Rotarians in mind, particularly those who might be thinking about taking part in a NID sometime in the future.

For those unused to navigating blogs, look to the right of this page in the February 2013 section (roughly opposite or below the “End Polio Now” symbol) and you will find five entries – if they are not showing individually, then click on the word February and they should then show at the bottom of that months list of blog entries.

Alternatively, you can get to the other four entries by clicking on the appropriate “here”

Travelling to Delhi click here

Getting to Badaun and Bereilly click here

Immunisation Day click here

Follow-up Day click here

When we returned to the UK, we were interviewed by the Bishop’s Stortford Talking Newspaper and the interview (in two parts) can be listened to by clicking on the arrow below here to listen to Part 1 

and on the arrow below here to listen to Part 2 – each part lasts around 15 minutes.

In 1988, the total number of cases of endemic Poliomyelitis worldwide was estimated to be around 350,000 spread over 125 countries but by the end of 2012, it was known to be

just over 200 with polio being endemic in only 3 countries: Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

For my generation (a post WWII baby), Polio used to be a much feared sometimes lethal illness and I can still remember being taken for my first Polio vaccination when I was nine. For my sons’ generation, Polio was no longer a common illness and for my grandsons’ generation, Polio is history as far as the United Kingdom is concerned although they were all vaccinated just in case.

The first recorded involvement of Rotary in the eradication of Polio is in 1979 when Rotary Clubs bought and helped deliver polio vaccine to more than six million children in the Philippines.

In 1985, Rotary International launched its PolioPlus campaign with the objective of making Polio the third virus to be eliminated throughout the world. Rotarians made an initial pledge of US$120 million and to date, their total financial contribution is over $1 billion with much more value being given in time. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have also significantly contributed to the Rotary campaign by more than matching Rotary’s cash contribution.

Three years after this (in 1988), the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was launched and this is currently led by Rotary, the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Rotary’s involvement in Polio eradication is detailed in numerous places including:

• a timeline (only completed up to 2009) about Polio and Rotary here
• You Tube videos about Rotary and Polio here
• a factsheet about Rotary’s contribution to the eradication of Polio here
• and a particularly good (and short) BBC account of the February 2012 Polio vaccination campaign in India here
• Rotary International’s India Polio Eradication website here (always seems to be a little out of date and incomplete)
• a very good article in the New York times about how the “Hearts and Minds” campaign was managed in India here
• an article here on Polio published in the Independent which was written a journalist who came to the February 2013 NID in Delhi

and there are an equally large number of articles about Polio in general available on the web including:

• The Global Polio Eradication Initiative here
• You Tube videos about Polio in general here
• World Health Authority (WHO) fact sheet about Polio here
• a readable explanation of Polio here (although many of the hyperlinked references in the article are no longer available)
• a good article about a 2012 Polio immunisation campaign in India here
• the Indian Government’s Polio eradication website here

The WHO estimate that through the actions of Rotary and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that worldwide, there have been 10 million fewer cases of Polio since the campaign started.

Polio was endemic in India until January 2012 when after years of intensive national and local vaccination programmes, they were able to say that their last recorded case of Polio was 12 months ago in January 2011.

During a National Immunisation Day (NID), up to 170 million children are vaccinated by up to 2½ million vaccinators and during a sub-National Immunisation Day (SNID) when only parts of the country are immunised, up to 70 million children are vaccinated.

Currently multiple immunisation days are held each year because a country must have no cases of polio for a three years before it is officially declared polio free by the WHO. The general sanitary and dietary conditions found throughout much of India do not lend themselves to maintaining a polio free status and therefore multiple doses of vaccine are given.

Although nothing has been decided yet, once India obtains Polio free status, there are likely to be only one or two NIDs per year because only 55% get the intravenous injection at a health centre.

For many years, Rotarians from all around the world have travelled, at their own expense, to India to take part in NIDs or SNIDs as Vaccinators. Their practical contribution may be small but (apart from enabling them to see how Rotary monies are spent and to see the programme in action) their presence at a vaccination station acts as a magnet to the local population who come to see “these strange people dressed in yellow T-shirts”.

We travelled to India as members of a team of Rotarians from the United Kingdom and Belgium for the February 2013 National Immunisation Day. We went to Baduan in Utter Pradesh which seems to be known for little other than its poverty (other Rotarians went to Delhi and to Lucknow) and these five blog entries record our experiences.