“I was suffering from high fever when my family rushed me to local doctors. Within 24 hours, I lost my ability to stand on my feet and a doctor soon confirmed that it was polio,” says 38-year-old Vinod Kumar Thakur.
Resident of Gopalganj, a district in Bihar, Thakur contracted polio when he was barely one year old. There was no polio vaccination available in those days. Afflicted with a disease that changed the course of his life, Thakur now runs a cyber café in Deoria, a district on the border between Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
“It was a setback for my family who did all they could have done for my treatment. They went to many hospitals in Mumbai, Kolkata and even Assam. My father, who was a farmer, had to spend more than Rs 1 lakh on my treatment.” The expenditure left his family distressed. “I really feel bad about lack of vaccines those days,” he says, adding that he has ensured his two daughters were administered the full vaccination course.