Teen heads to India on vaccination mission

McClatchy Newspapers (MCT) - When Sophia Hameed first visited her birthplace of Nagpur, India, she was struck by the vast gap between haves and have-nots.

"You could be having dinner in a really expensive, luxurious restaurant, then go out to the street and see a little child wearing rags and begging for scraps of food," said the Miami Senior High student of her trip two years ago.

While there, she sought out the Nagpur branch of Rotary International, the business group that has been involved for nearly three decades in fighting polio in the developing world. India is one of four countries where polio is an endemic disease.

Sophia's two-year quest culminated Wednesday in a return trip to take part in a worldwide initiative to vaccinate 161 million Indian children younger than 5 against polio.

"I just can't wait, this is so exciting," said the 17-year-old while waiting to board her plane. She flew to Chicago, where she joined 40 other Rotarians from the United States, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica and Australia. From Chicago they were to fly to Delhi and embark on a 12-day sojourn based in Chandigarh in northern India.

The Rotarians are working with the Indian government and the World Health Organization. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is helping fund the project.

"There is an army of people working on this," said Carlos Ruiz, director of the Rotary Club of Miami.

Sophia will help administer oral polio vaccines to children at a Chandigarh clinic. After that, she says, comes the most interesting part.

OUT IN THE SLUMS

"For two days, we'll split up into teams and actually go out into the slums to look for children who need vaccinating," she said, adding she has never been to this part of India before.

The trip will coincide with India's National Immunization Day, observed Feb. 2. Groups of Rotarians will fan out across the country to help stamp out the infectious virus, also endemic to Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Before polio vaccines were developed in the 1950s and early 1960s by doctors Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, the virus was a worldwide epidemic often resulting in crippling leg malformations and paralysis.

"Fighting polio has been one of the Rotary Club's main goals for about 28 years," Ruiz said.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged more than $350 million to Rotary International, which is trying to raise $200 million, Ruiz said.

Volunteers and students like Sophia are the foot soldiers.

During her 2007 trip, Sophia got her first taste of helping India's children. She had gone to Nagpur's Gyan Vikas School and noticed some of the classrooms had no chairs or desks. The students lacked paper and practiced their math and handwriting on tiny blackboards, using bits of chalk.

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"Seeing that gave me the idea for the backpack project," Sophia said.

$5,000 RAISED

She and members of Miami High's Interact Club, a service group sponsored by Rotary Club of Miami, sold charm necklaces and held a walkathon, raising about $5,000 to send 400 backpacks full of school supplies to the children.

Sophia, who lives with her family in Little Havana, is hoping to attend Columbia University in the fall.

In the meantime, she is taking her backpack program, B4US, (Backpacks for Underprivileged Students) to kids in Peru.

Her mother, Zarina Hameed, a teacher at Citrus Grove Middle School, said she has raised her children to value education and to have a wider view of their place in society.

"I tell them the whole world is our family," she said. "I want my kids to be citizens of the world, not just one country."

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© 2009, The Miami Herald.