Vardhan was the man who launched the country’s first polio campaign in Delhi on Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, 2 October, in 1994, and implemented it successfully. The model was replicated throughout the country and also in several Asian countries.
Vardhan, as health minister of Delhi, had organised the immunisation of 1.2 million children of Delhi on a single day and started the Pulse Polio movement for the first time in the country. The very next year, aided by then president Shankar Dayal Sharma and AR Antulay, then union health minister, he was successful in roping in all state governments to organise the first Pulse Polio drive at the national level.
‘I don’t want to take personal credit for Pulse Polio campaign because I believe that visualising it was the easiest part. A programme of such gigantic dimensions, and that too in an age before mobile telephony and internet, would hardly have been possible without the tireless effort of lakhs of doctors, paramedic staff, government officials, volunteers and other workers,’ said Vardhan.
‘Today I am saddened by the partisan attitude of the Manmohan Singh government. They have not even invited me to this event. This is not an insult to me but of the spirit which made polio eradication possible,’ he added.
Vardhan contended that like polio, 26 more infectious diseases, including Hepatitis and cervical cancer can be controlled with proper vaccination. Vardhan was twice conferred Rotary Internationals Paul Harris Fellowship and the Polio Eradication Champion Award, which had earlier been received by US president Bill Clinton, British prime minister John Major and United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan.
Vardhan, as health minister of Delhi, had organised the immunisation of 1.2 million children of Delhi on a single day and started the Pulse Polio movement for the first time in the country. The very next year, aided by then president Shankar Dayal Sharma and AR Antulay, then union health minister, he was successful in roping in all state governments to organise the first Pulse Polio drive at the national level.
‘I don’t want to take personal credit for Pulse Polio campaign because I believe that visualising it was the easiest part. A programme of such gigantic dimensions, and that too in an age before mobile telephony and internet, would hardly have been possible without the tireless effort of lakhs of doctors, paramedic staff, government officials, volunteers and other workers,’ said Vardhan.
‘Today I am saddened by the partisan attitude of the Manmohan Singh government. They have not even invited me to this event. This is not an insult to me but of the spirit which made polio eradication possible,’ he added.
Vardhan contended that like polio, 26 more infectious diseases, including Hepatitis and cervical cancer can be controlled with proper vaccination. Vardhan was twice conferred Rotary Internationals Paul Harris Fellowship and the Polio Eradication Champion Award, which had earlier been received by US president Bill Clinton, British prime minister John Major and United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan.