Distrust hurts effort to end polio in India

GAYA, India -- Gearing up for the final push to wipe out polio, India has run into a hurdle in an eastern state, where poor, conservative communities are refusing to give polio drops to children because they distrust the medicine and its distributors.

The resistance could seriously hurt India's chances of meeting a United Nations deadline for eradicating the potentially crippling disease globally by 2005.

Health workers dispensing polio drops in the slums of Gaya in Bihar have met resistance from residents who say the drops contain antifertility or impotency-inducing drugs and are part of the government efforts to curb India's burgeoning population.

"They feel it will reduce fertility of future generations," Mahjabeen Anjum, a health worker participating in a special polio vaccination drive, said Friday.

Polio usually strikes children younger than 5 through contaminated drinking water and attacks the central nervous system, causing paralysis, muscular atrophy, deformation, and in some cases, death.

India has reported 29 new polio cases this year, after 260 last year and 1,556 in 2002. Seven cases this year were in Bihar.

Sanjeeda Khatoon, a vegetable vendor and mother of nine, said she had not allowed health workers to give the polio preventive drops to her children. "The government is more concerned with population control than the health of people," Khatoon said.

World Health Organization specialists say even a single case of polio can result in a flare-up of the disease and set back the global aim of wiping out polio by 2005.