Recognising the world’s vaccination heroes

On a recent trip to Mohsand, India – a village of just 1,200 people in Uttar Pradesh – I met Poonam Devi, a community health worker (Asha) and vaccines hero.

Poonam is a tiny woman, much smaller than my 5’2’’ frame, but she carries herself with authority and a bright smile as she walks through the village where she knows the name of every child under the age of 2. Her neat handwriting fills a ledger in which she records children’s birth, their weight and the dates on which they receive their life-saving vaccinations.  Though she doesn’t administer the vaccines herself, she holds the health knowledge of each child in her ledger.

When I asked Poonam questions in my broken Hindi about her experience as an Asha, she confidently answered – yes, her village has the vaccines it needs; yes, sometimes children miss a dose if they have a fever or cold but the parents always bring them in when they’re better; yes, she checks in with each pregnant mother before the baby is born. Poonam’s work is what ensures the miracle of vaccines reaches children in Mohsand, which enables them to begin their life free from the fear of vaccine preventable diseases.

Despite the success of vaccines, however, other health related issues stood out as Poonam walked us through her village. For instance:

• In her village, only 40 of 188 families had a toilet, and evidence of misuse of previously built toilets was obvious.  People still prefer to use the nearby fields.  Without access to proper sanitation, children are vulnerable to diarrheal diseases.
• While each family with a child between 7 months and 3 years receives a 1 kg packet of additional fortified grains for supplemental feeding, the mother from one family we visited bashfully admitted that the water buffalo gets the grains because her milk becomes so much richer.
• A father we met lovingly holding his 1 year old daughter told us that in a span of 4 years, his wife and he lost two of their four children in infancy.

These observations were striking, and they reiterated the importance of working to ensure health services are integrated across vaccines, family planning, nutrition and water and sanitation, in order for these villagers to live healthy lives.

This article is published in collaboration with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Helen is a Senior Program Officer on the Vaccine Delivery Team supporting the Enteric and Diarrheal Disease portfolio on rotavirus and cholera vaccines.

Image: A health worker displays bottles of vaccine ‘Pneumovax’ during a vaccination programme. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri.