Fair Oaks Couple Immunize Children in India

Before travelling to India earlier this year, longtime Fair Oaks resident Fred Rowe knew very little about polio, even though he’d been an emergency room physician for more than 20 years.

“That’s because you don’t see polio in the United States anymore, especially not in the emergency department,” Rowe, 67 said.

Rowe and his wife, Alice, a retired nurse, saw the devastating effects of the infectious virus when they spent two days in India immunizing children along with 35 other Rotary International volunteers.

“Hopefully the day will come when polio is completely eradicated, and we can say we had a part in it,” Alice Rowe, 59, said. “It felt pretty incredible to have actually, physically been able to give the children those drops.”

Although the crippling disease has been all but wiped out in the U.S. for decades, it’s still endemic in parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

In India – where less than 30 years ago there were some 200,000 cases – the number has dwindled enough to take the country off the endemic list, thanks to a major, international effort by the United Nation Children’s Fund, Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization and Rotary International.

“This year, there have been less than 100 cases worldwide,” Fred Rowe said. “There’s no technical reason that it can’t be eliminated right now. It’s all a matter of religious, social and political conflict that’s preventing it.”

All children under the age of five – about 170 million kids – are immunized through oral drops as many as 10 times a year in some parts of India, according to Alice Rowe.

“They do it over and over again just in case they have a diarrhea illness and the immunization doesn’t take,” she explained.

In February, a group of 37 Rotarians from Canada and the U.S., including the Rowes, participated in one of India’s National Immunization Days. On their first day in India, volunteers were assigned to a bus station.

“They do a lot of advertising ahead of time, and so that first day people came to us,” Alice Rowe said. “We got kids who were not only brought to us by their families, but kids in transit, too. Any child who looked about five years old or younger, if they didn’t already have a mark on their left pinkie to show they’d been immunized, we gave them drops.”

The Rotarians spent the next day in what Alice Rowe described as a “semi-slum”, going from house to house immunizing children who hadn’t yet been marked.

“There’s no consent signed, and there often aren’t even any parents around,” Fred Rowe said. “They kids know to look at the sky and open their mouths. It’s absolutely amazing.

“We saw healthcare workers go on a bus and do five kids in about two minutes. We’re talking babes in mothers’ arms. They don’t even say, ‘Hi.’”

The Rowes immunized one baby who was only six days old.

“It felt really meaningful to think that this may be the reason this child and the others won’t get polio,” Alice Rowe said. “Polio is not a little thing, it’s a big deal.”

Back in the 1950s, polio victims in the United States received physical therapy as well as braces to help strengthen and straighten their limbs. But in India, the disease either kills its victims or withers and shrinks the lower extremities, Fred Rowe said.

“You’re on the ground for the rest of your life, and you see it in India,” he said. “Someone took a video of someone crawling around on the ground … It’s part of their society, they see it. It’s not an abstract concept.”

The National Immunization Days are working.

The last polio case in India was in January 2011, according to the Rowes.                               

Still, a country has to go for three years without a case of the disease before it’s declared polio-free.

Although there were fewer than a hundred cases of polio worldwide, last year the disease popped up in several countries, including China, where there hadn’t been an incident in 10 years.

“All of a sudden there were 21 cases in China in an area that is adjacent to Pakistan,” said Fred Rowe, who added that the source of the particular strain turned out to be Pakistan, which is still on the endemic list.

All the hotspots were put out, but the scare demonstrated how a nearly non-existent disease can suddenly rear its head again.

The Rowes urge all Americans to not only contribute to immunization efforts, but push lawmakers to continue funding such programs.

“If we don’t continue to quash it, it could become a big deal again,” Alice Rowe said.