Qari Aqeel knows
what the absence of vaccines can do. As a child, he was not immunized against
polio. He paid the price. Now, he helps prevent this from happening to other
children. His father, too, is keenly aware how the lack of immunization
blighted Aqeel’s life. “Immunizing
one’s child,” he says, “is every parent’s responsibility; yet I was unable to
fulfill this duty for my son.”
The father's words - and Aqeel's - can be watched here.
Aqeel was a young child when he contracted polio . The disease left him paralyzed. The society he lived in was not accepting:
“In the first three years”, he says, he had not choice but
to stay home. When children saw him, they would hit him with their shoes, spit
on him, some would even hit him with bricks. After those first three years his
father provided him with crutches, which allowed him to leave his home and move
around – but the children would still harass him, push him and make him fall.
Aqeel was not alone in his generation. Vaccine access was
not easy, and polio was endemic in the third world long after cases declined in
the first world. In the 1980s, over 1000 children were paralyzed every day;
in 1986 the World Health Organization estimated annual cases at over 250,000 a
year – and those are cases of paralytic polio, not cases of people who contracted
the virus. Most people affected with
the poliovirus will have no symptoms. But “One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis
(usually in the legs). Among those paralyzed, 5% to 10% die when their
breathing muscles become immobilized.” http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs114/en/index.html. There is no real cure or treatment for
paralytic polio. The only protection we have is prevention.
In 1988, a polio eradication initiative was launched that led
to immunization of over 2.5 billion children. As more and more children were protected, polio cases fell dramatically. By
this year, 2013, Polio had been eradicated from all except three countries.
Unfortunately,
Qari Aqeel lives in
Pakistan, one of those three (http://www.polioeradication.org/Mediaroom/Factsheets.aspx).
The most recent information is that “Pakistan
has reported six polio cases to date in 2013, compared to 15 at the same time
last year.” Immunization efforts continue, in spite of
some media criticism (p. 26) and incidents of violence against those
engaged in the immunization efforts. Aqeel helps them, in his area.
Aqeel works to remind those around him of
what polio can do to a young person. He overcame the harsh environment of his
youth and his own paralysis to become a teacher in a Madrassa, teaching 85 children
– most of them from poor homes – the Qur’an. He built a life, and does
something meaningful. He still suffers, though, when, as a believing Muslim, he
is unable to stand before his God, as he would like. Instead, he must remain
kneeling when the others stand. Watching children play, he is glad for their
innocent joy, but sorry he cannot participate. He still keenly feels the price
he paid for not having the polio vaccine as a child.
Aqeel’s father painfully regrets his
inability to immunize his child, and the suffering it caused to Aqeel. He, too,
agrees with Aqeel’s efforts to support immunization, to prevent other children
from suffering as Aqeel did. “My mistake had compromised Aqeel’s entire life.”
That is the message Aqeel gives to hesitant
parents: vaccinate your children, protect them from my fate. When those
involved in the effort come, he helps them, sometimes administering the oral
polio vaccines himself. He is tireless, because he is fighting to provide the
children of Pakistan with the protection he lacked. He knows what could happen
without it. He was there.
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