Health staff braves heavy snowfall to immunise children against polio in Gurez Valley

Bandipora, Mar 3: Heavy snowfall did not stop the paramedics and volunteers of the pulse polio immunisation programme in Gurez valley from vaccinating children.

The paramedics walked through heavy snowfall with boxes slung from their shoulders on Sunday, to get to the centers for vaccination, making their way through snow deeper than knee length, videos shared with Greater Kashmir showed.

The officials said staff, besides other parts of Gurez valley, also reached the remotest areas in its Tulail region, where people live in villages isolated at high altitudes and are inaccessible when the valley is snowbound.

Dr Shahnawaz Makhdoomi, a ZMO at Baduaab, who oversees 14 villages of Tulail region in tough terrain, told Greater Kashmir that his teams faced heavy snowfall and harsh weather conditions to get to the vaccination booths.

"There is heavy snowfall in the region," Shahnawaz said. He said the 14 teams, with four members each, had to go through snow that was four feet deep or even more.

"The roads to most of the villages were closed, so we ensured we were at the booths."

He, however, said that the booths were mostly empty as people chose to stay indoors because of the heavy snowfall and the difficulty of reaching the booths on foot.

"At some places, our men had to walk four to five kilometers through snow that was four feet deep and still falling," Shahnawaz said on Sunday.

Notably, heavy snowfall and extreme cold restricts people in Gurez valley to the warmth of their homes as walking outside almost becomes impossible. Shahnawaz said that "Our teams decided to go door to door to finish the immunisation."

The most difficult places, such as Safaid Aab, Sikander Nalla, Neeru, Garat Nalla, which are among the remotest villages, he said, were almost done, where dozens of children were to be immunised.

With the Tulail-Dawar road also closed, the officials at Tulail said they had got the vials from Dawar, which is centrally located, some days back when the road was open.

"We have a cold chain at Badugam here, where we kept the vaccines," he added. "Two days ago, when the weather forecast was issued, we gave the vials to our paramedics."

BMO Gurez, Dr Tahira, told Greater Kashmir they had deployed 227 staff to vaccinate 4,886 children from zero to five years old.

It included 27 paramedical staff for the upper zone, 12 for the middle zone and 10 for the lower zone. In addition, other helping staff were 112, 56 and 40 respectively.

The vials were flown into Gurez valley on 27 February, Tahira said, as the Gurez-Bandipora road remains closed.

Tahira said that by Sunday evening, 65 percent of the children were immunised and praised her staff for "risking their lives to fulfil their duty and make the programme successful".

She said her staff was trying hard to reach four difficult villages of Refugee, Satti Nalla, Anderkoot, and Dangithal, as they were covered with heavy snow.

"But they could not reach these villages on Sunday, but we are hopeful these villages will also be covered in two to three days."

The Gurez valleys plain areas like Dawar received two and a half feet of fresh snow on Saturday and Sunday, while Tulail and Bagtore regions received over double the snowfall, locals said.