By Julhas Alam
Dhaka - Eleven-month-old Tumpa Moni may not know how lucky she was to get two drops of polio vaccine on her tongue on Sunday at a Bangladesh vaccination camp.
But her 15-year-old cousin, Babul, does know. The disease left him paralysed when he was three - when the medicine was unavailable to him - and has recently re-emerged, prompting a government drive to vaccinate up to 20-million children against the dreaded malady.
"We had no idea about the disease when Babul got sick. My sister with her paralysed boy is suffering a lot," said Tumpa's mother, Hamida Begum, at the vaccination camp on the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka.
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When Babul got sick, some said it was caused by evil spirits, Begum said.
"But I can't make the same mistake, so I am here today," said Begum, a housewife whose husband runs a small grocery shop.
People with children lined up on Sunday at camps around Dhaka as the government launched the first phase of a three-round campaign to vaccinate for free 18-million to 20-million children against polio after it re-emerged in the country following a five-year absence.
The campaign's second and third phases will start nationwide on May 13 and June 11.
At the camp Tumpa went to, 50 children received the oral vaccine in the first two hours after opening, said Lucky Rahman, a health official at the camp.
"The number will increase later on," Rahman said.
Authorities have publicised the campaign through newspaper, radio and television announcements - and, in some areas, loudspeakers.
But one parent, a Dhaka housemaid who gave only the name Parul, said she "knew nothing" about the program before a reporter asked her about it.
She said she would take her baby in for the vaccine after she finished the day's work.
The United Nations children's programme Unicef and the World Health Organisation helped Bangladesh conduct extensive polio vaccination programmes in 1995-2004, with what had appeared to be the country's last case reported in August 2000, according to the government and the WHO.
But the country's efforts to be declared polio-free were thwarted when nine-year-old Rahima Akhter was recently paralysed by the disease in the eastern district of Chandpur.
Health officials found Akhter has been infected with deadly P1 polio virus, also recently detected in part of neighbouring India.
WHO says polio is still endemic in India, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.
The virus invades the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis. It spreads when unvaccinated people - mostly children under the age of five - come into contact with the faeces of those with the virus, often through water.
Polio cannot be cured, but can be readily prevented by vaccine.
About 1,880 people were infected with polio worldwide last year, down from more than 350 000 before 1988, when WHO launched a global anti-polio campaign, according to the WHO. - Sapa-AP
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