The Hindu Business Line : Little drops of...

Today, Canada's Dr Kenneth Hobbs can look back with satisfaction at the success of the PolioPlus campaign that he helped launch in India way back in 1979.

The first time this Canadian doctor flew to India in 1979, he brought with him dozens of polio vaccine vials as hand luggage. The irony was that countries like India, where polio was rampant then, didn't have the capability to produce the vaccine, while countries like Canada, which produced the vaccine, had no polio cases. So Dr Kenneth Hobbs landed in Chennai, got the help of fellow Rotarian and architect Krish Chitale, and triggered India's determined fight against polio.

This fight was a personal mission for him then, and remains so even today, though now he works in tandem with the Rotary International to eradicate polio worldwide. In fact, he was one of the eight-member Rotarian team that launched the very successful PolioPlus programme. Though he has worked in countries such as Sumatra, Indonesia, Vietnam, Rwanda, Ghana, and Madagascar, he has a soft corner for India. He visits every year, and sometimes twice a year, and at personal expense, to design and implement the PolioPlus programme. He also facilitated Rotary International's grant of $2.6 million in 1986 for Tamil Nadu's PolioPlus programme, which gave Tamil Nadu a `country' status.

Today, he looks back with satisfaction at a mission that has been very successful. With the exception of a few pockets in some African countries and states like Andhra Pradesh in India, the world has managed to keep polio at bay.

Dr Hobbs recently received the `Lifetime Achievement Award' from District 3230 of the Rotary International. "I feel very privileged. The award came as a surprise. Of course, one doesn't work for society with rewards in mind, but sometimes it is nice to get a pat in the back," he says.

No stranger to awards, he was honoured with the C.M. (Companion Member of the Order of Canada), the highest honour bestowed by that country. "The interesting thing is, he is the only Canadian to have been honoured by the Order of Canada for work done outside the country," points out Eva, his wife.

"It made me cry to see and hear about children crawling around because of polio affliction," Dr Hobbs says about the inspiration behind his long campaign against polio. His focus extends to rehabilitation as well. He has conducted surgical camps for over a 1,000 polio-affected children in Tamil Nadu to set right their Achilles tendon, besides organising computer literacy programmes to help them secure employment.

He is all praise for the way India has tackled the poliovirus. "To immunise over 75 million children in one day, across a country of such magnitude, staggers the imagination. It is nothing short of a miracle," he says.

He finds "India a wonderful country that is grossly misunderstood. Before my visit here in 1979, I too didn't know anything about India." Today, he and his wife have several close friends across Tamil Nadu, with whom they stay whenever they visit India. "My friends in Canada wonder why I keep coming back to India. They will understand if they come here, not as tourists, but as guests of some family. Foreigners miss the real India when they come here as tourists and park themselves in hotels," Dr Hobbs enthuses.

With polio fairly under control now, is it time for people like him to look at other communicable diseases like AIDS, for instance?

"Any campaign against a disease involves three stages: diagnosis, treatment, and finally isolation. Unless AIDS diagnosis is made compulsory for everybody, much as in the way children are compulsorily tested for polio, I don't see a campaign against AIDS on the lines of the PolioPlus campaign working," he says.

Besides the polio campaign, he has been busy with a water restoration project where six temple tanks in Chennai were de-silted and restored. He is also working to improve conditions in Chennai's corporation schools. "We don't aim at anything fancy. We look at basics such as building a reasonable number of toilets, supply of potable drinking water and provision of things like desks for children. It is touching to see the kids so happy to get even this," says the down-to-earth doctor.

Picture by A.M. Faraqui

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page