By Team Mangalorean Bangalore

BANGALORE, December 22, 2008: Karnataka Health and Family Welfare Minister B Sriramulu today allayed fears that Polio drops administered to lakhs of children in the state yesterday had affected the infants. Speaking to reporters here, he said not a single case of a child becoming sick after being administered the polio drops was recorded.

He said the case of a child death in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, which led to rumours, resulting in tension gripping many hospitals in the state was due to Hydrocephalus, a brain disease, and the child was not given the oral vaccine at all. Even Tamil Nadu government has clarified it, he added.

He said the people, who had expressed concern yesterday, were sufficiently educated. They were requested not to give credence to such rumours.

In a separate press conference, Secretary of Health and Family Welfare P N Sreenevasachary said there were no reports of any adverse effect with regard to the administration of polio vaccine in Karnataka as part of the national polio pulse programme.

Parents with kids seen at Government Hospital as rumours spread on polio drive scare in Chikmagalore on Sunday night 

A ward seen ransacked at KR Hospital in Mysore on Sunday night as mob rush to hospital over polio drive death scare. 

A ward seen ransacked at KR Hospital in Mysore on Sunday night as mob rush to hospital over polio drive death scare. 

A total of 60.87 lakh children in the state had been administered the vaccine as part of the national campaign against the disease yesterday, he told reporters here.  The commissioner dismissed reports relating to contamination of the polio vaccine as rumours.

Following false reports by a section of the TV channels on Sunday, the parents of some children rushed to the Government hospitals smashed the windowpanes and attacked the doctors in Bangalore and Mysore on Monday.

Some miscreants attacked a children's hospital in Mysroe and damaged medical equipment and other medicines. MLA A. Ramdas has appealed to the public maintain peace. The police, however, had taken action against the miscreants who damaged the hospital equipment.

"No reports of any adverse effect had been reported", he said,  reacting to reports that a child had died in Erode district in Tamil Nadu allegedly after being administered polio drops. The child had been suffering from a serious health condition and its death was in no way connected to the polio drops, he clarified. Some 157 children in that locality had been administered the drops with no complications being reported, he said.

He said following some media channel flashing the news of the death, parents of children who had been administered the drops, flocked to various government and private hospitals in the late hours of the night and past midnight, spreading panic.

 Doctors, who checked the children, found the children to be in good health. 
The programme has been on for 13 years and several scientists and others have dedicated themselves to the programme'', the commissioner said.

Karnataka, he said had not had a single polio case for the past three years. However, rumors like this could prove to be a setback to the national mission aimed at eradicating the disease from the country, he said.   

The state had targeted 72.66 lakh children for administration of the polio vaccine this time and 83.64 percent had been covered. The door-to-door polio programme had met with some resistance today due to the rumours, he said, and urged people to cooperate.

Previous report

No truth in reports of polio vaccine death