Holland man travels with Rotary group to bring Polio vaccine to India
By CHERI McSPADEN
You hear that Americans are not exactly welcomed warmly around the world these days, but John Hoekstra didn't experience that on his recent trip to India.
"No, actually it was just the opposite," he said.
Hoekstra is the president of Factory Insite, a Holland business that develops industrial software, but in January, in his capacity as a Rotarian, he was delivering polio vaccines.
"We had amazing press coverage. There were a pile of newspapers with our pictures on the cover," he said. "One camp we were at, near Dhan Pur, they were training college-age women, and I never felt like a rock star before, but they just inundated us, and I signed 40 or 50 things. One said, 'Oh, I don't have any paper -- will you sign my palm?' I said, 'Yeah, but you have to promise to wash it.' And she said, 'Oh no, I'm never going to wash it.' And I thought, 'Oh my goodness.'"
The young women were impressed by the good work done by Rotary International, which, on Feb. 1, eliminated polio in Niger and Egypt.
"In North America, polio is a distant memory for most, but ... the four countries now where polio is still endemic are Nigeria, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan," Hoekstra said.
Would he go to Afghanistan?
"I would be a little hesitant," he said. "But we spent time in Varanasi (India) and I just read in the Sentinel a few days ago about a bombing in Varanasi that killed 20-some-odd people. I said, 'I was there. I know where that is.'"
In 1985, Rotary International created the PolioPlus program.
"The 100th anniversary of Rotary was last year, so the goal was to eliminate polio worldwide by then. And we didn't quite make it, BUT we're very close. One of my reasons for going to India now was that we may be done with the extraordinary immunization days this year in India and it can become part of the public health infrastructure."
Something to be proud of, both for himself, and for the Rotary Club of Holland, which has been involved with the polio project for about 20 years.
Hoekstra represented Holland in a massive group of volunteers who manned 1,200 vaccination booths on National Immunization Day, Jan. 15.
"The word booths evokes a totally different picture in my mind. I think of like a carnival booth," he said. "That's not really the case. They use people's porches or schools, or any area where they could set up a table."
The target age is children 5 and younger, since they're at the highest risk to contract polio.
"It's an oral polio vaccine, we squeeze a little nipple and hit their tongue. Two drops," Hoekstra said. "In our district, the goal was 200,000 children.
"We paint the left pinkie of each child who was vaccinated with indelible ink, which lasts about a week. You don't want to waste vaccine on children you've already vaccinated. It doesn't hurt them, but it's just a waste of vaccine. It costs Rotary about 60 cents a shot. That includes publicity and logistics."
The concept of helping people isn't something new to Hoekstra. As he grew up in Kalamazoo, his father was active in the YMCA, which did missionary work, particularly in South America, but also in Asia.
"About the time I was in junior high school, we started traveling internationally. ... We'd go to various areas in the world and stop and visit missionaries, stay with them and do projects."
Hoekstra calls his father a "very intense" traveler, who would pack in a lot. If anyone complained, he'd say, "Well, how many times are we going to get to this area of the world?"
"And we'd say, 'Yeah, OK Dad,'" Hoekstra said, chuckling.
His mother, Marian Dame, grew up in Holland.
"She was the daughter of C.P. Dame, the pastor," he said.
Having traveled so much with his parents, Hoekstra knew a home in India wouldn't be like a home in Holland.
"The Eastern toilets are interesting, just a hole in the ground basically, even in a middle-class home. It's just a porcelain bowl that's set in the ground with pads to stand on. It flushes like a Western-style toilet, but it was what we called a 'squat-upon.'"
And he knew that international traveling meant he'd need several vaccinations.
"Yes, India is one of the last polio-infested areas of the world, but there's also malaria, cholera and hepatitis," Hoekstra said. "I did get cholera one time in El Salvador. That was not fun, but if it's treated right away, it only lasts a few days.
"One of the next big initiatives for Rotary International is clean water ... If we can get enough clean water, we'll start to knock off the other diseases."
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