Fourteen-month-old Raj Gupta sleeps soundly on the hospital bed at the Indira Gandhi Memorial hospital, Bhiwandi, even as his mother eyes well up at mention of polio.

After four years, this satellite town on the north-eastern fringes of Mumbai, a powerloom town with a huge migrant population has registered Raj as a polio case, the state’s second this year. The worse news: As many as 1,500 families in Bhiwandi have, despite immense special efforts by health workers to dispel misconceptions and misunderstandings related to the oral polio vaccine in the community, repeatedly refused to let their children be administered the dosage.

“There have been several measures we have adopted to convert the mindset. Yet, the biggest problem we have is of repeated refusals. Some people refuse to let their children be given the vaccine despite the sermons and the educational efforts we have made,” said Dr B D Sorte, chief medical officer, Bhiwandi. “That is our biggest challenge. Our records show that there are 1,500 such families. They also refuse when our workers go to their house to administer the vaccine.”

In 2006, Maharashtra recorded a polio case after a break of three years, bringing the state back on the national polio map. Since then, health officials have identified migration from northern states of the country as the primary source of the virus in Mumbai and its suburbs. Since last year, under the guidance of the World Health Organisation, officials have been conducting monthly pulse polio programmes across the state.

Raj, who migrated to Mumbai in October last year, has been administered the oral polio vaccine since then. His homemaker mother, however, admits that she refused to let her son be injected during a regular immunisation round back home in their hometown in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh.

“The only thing was that I didn’t give him the rural injections. But I did give all the polio doses after coming to Mumbai. I hope he gets well, he is my only child,”she says.

Raj developed a fever and weakness in the last week of April, following which he was taken to a local doctor who referred the child to the local health centre. Officials there suspected polio since Raj was also growing weak in his right leg. He was sent to the IGM Hospital on April 27 and a confirmation of polio was received last week from the Haffkine Institute Laboratory.

“The date of the onset of polio is April 26. He is under treatment now and we will be able to tell the chances of recovery only after 60 days,” said Dr Sorte.