Biratnagar, December 24:

Vaccination supervisor at the Morang District Public Health Office (DPHO), Shantiram Khatiwada, personally went to the house of a local businessman and administered polio drops to the latter’s twin sons today.

Khatiwada, on the second day of the second phase of the national polio vaccination campaign, administered polio drops to Nischal and Nikesh Lohiya, 9, twin sons of businessman Rajesh Lohiya in Biratnagar Sub-metropolis.

Khatiwada had to go to the house after the children were not brought to the designated vaccination centre till late this afternoon.

“We explained to the guardian the advantages of giving polio drops to the children,” Bishnu Poudel of the United Nations’ International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) said. “People of our community believe that if children are vaccinated in hospital, it will be sufficient,” Rajesh said, adding, “People say frequent administration of polio drops is not good, so we did not feel it necessary to administer the drops to the children this time.”

“The fact is a lot of children in urban areas miss out on the polio drops as many families from the affluent business community tend to ignore it,” administrator at the Morang DPHO, Nawaraj Subba, said, adding: “Female health volunteers deployed for vaccination campaign do not have access to the families of the affluent people from the business community.”

Though the Rotary Club has been helping to make the vaccination campaign a success, chairperson of the Rotary Club (Biratnagar) Bishwanath Agrawal said, “We are aware that there is problem of the children of our community missing out on the vaccination. We want to solve the problem.”

According to a data at the Morang DPHO, there are 23,793 children in Biratnagar and the majority of the affluent business class resides in wards 8, 9 and 12.

Meanwhile, another vaccination team which visited the house of businessman Deep Chand Surana, could not administer the polio drops to his grandsons as they were away at school.

Surana countered, “As we are already vaccinating our grandchildren as per the schedule of the hospital, why should we wait for workers of the national vaccination campaign?” Surana said.

The team explained to Surana the importance of giving polio drops to the children.