Measles: Teams knock on doors of vax sceptics, convince 250 kids' kin

A day after Aleena Khan got her two-month-old immunised with the pentavalent vaccine, the infant developed a swelling at the injection site. It eventually turned into a hard lump, which required surgical excision. Guilty of putting her son and the entire family through the ordeal, Khan refused all subsequent vaccine doses for her son, becoming one of the hardcore refusal cases in the civic records of Kurla.

- Sumitra.DebRoy timesgroup.com

On a recent morning, Pratibha Khuje, a community mobilisation coordinator (CMC), knocked on Khan's door in Kurla's Kajupada, asking why she hadn't vaccinated her child. The mother narrated how the family faced massive hospital expenditure for the infant's surgery following vaccination. But Khan went silent when Khuje explained that a lump could be a rare after-effect of immunisation and shouldn't deter them from future doses. It took Khuje three more visits and hours of counselling before the parents brought out the kid for the remaining vaccine shots.

Khuje is a part of a special four-member squad that is on a mission to convert vaccine refusals into acceptances by reaching out to families individually in some of the city's high-refusal pockets. Since the birth of the CMC team in September, close to 250 children, whose parents were previously opposed to immunisation, have been successfully vaccinated.

"The idea of hiring CMC team was born to tackle the cohort of unvaccinated kids which has been increasing due to hardcore refusals," said Dr Mangala Gomare, BMC's executive health officer. The four members have been assigned four problematic areas M east (Govandi), L (Kurla) and P north (Malad east and Malad west).