UK’s University of Birmingham is working with Orissa’s Ravenshaw University on a new research project looking that is focussed on the ethics, policy and practice concerning polio vaccination in the state. Though India has strived and conquered polio, misconceptions continue to exist around polio vaccination.
It is a two-year project which will garner pertinent empirical evidence about attitudes to polio vaccination campaigns in Orissa from three major groups namely parents, community workers and government officials who are involved in planning and implementing the campaign. The research team will also study more remote tribal areas where facilities are less developed.
The research will outline and explore the ethical issues related to vaccination in general, as well as the issues revealed by the evidence gathered through the project. The project aims to lay the foundations for a longstanding collaboration between the University of Birmingham and Ravenshaw in terms of both teaching and research in ethics and history relating to health. The first of a series of interdisciplinary research workshops will be conducted in Bhubaneswar in early December, this year.
Angus Dawson, Professor of Public Health Ethics from the College of Medical and Dental Sciences at the University of Birmingham, said: “A lot of people in India do not opt for mass vaccination programmes for a number of reasons. We want to explore these reasons and bring about an attitudinal change. It’s very exciting to be working in Orissa with Ravenshaw University on this kind of project. My background is in philosophy and ethics, but I have to engage with the real world of vaccination policy and practice. We expect to learn a lot about the historical, social and cultural context of public health work, and think this will result in new depth in terms of our own understanding, and further research questions to be explored in the future”.
EH News Bureau
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