Standing tall

 

 

One-woman campaign to keep polio out of mainland Africa’s smallest country scores big victory

It had looked like it might never happen. But in June, there they were, hundreds of volunteers marching down dirt roads, on their way to deliver polio vaccine to children in the smallest nation on the African continent. There were the high-powered government officials who’d come to wish the team well, and even administer a few drops of vaccine themselves. And in the middle of them all, dressed for work in a baseball cap, T-shirt, and proud smile was Rotarian Oumou Seydou Tall, the indefatigable woman who almost single-handedly – and against all odds – had made this day a reality.

For more than a year, Tall, the Gambia PolioPlus Committee chair and a member of the Rotary Club of Fajara, had sought to hold a National Immunization Day (NID) in the country, only to find that there simply wasn’t enough money. Polio had slipped down the list of priorities for Gambia, a tiny sliver of land surrounded by Senegal, in West Africa. The government had a mandatory immunization program that reached 90 percent of newborns but was unable to do more. The international community considered Gambia polio-free and was directing its limited resources to countries deemed to be at higher risk.

Tall, a 51-year-old divorced mother, was convinced that polio in Gambia deserved more attention. After all, she argued, 10 percent of the nation’s children had not yet been immunized. And that wasn’t even counting the children of immigrants, large numbers of whom had entered the country from Liberia and Sierra Leone – troubled nations with spotty immunization records. Plus, migrant workers could always carry the disease from Nigeria, where polio is still endemic.

A consummate networker, Tall told everyone who would listen that the threat of polio in Gambia was real. She worked the phones and got herself invited to all the right gatherings. She gave speeches to international delegations and met with government officials and everyone else who mattered.

She was, quite simply, unrelenting – though affably so. Tall “is certainly not the type to be modest with her thoughts and views during meetings,” says Mathew Baldeh, a UNICEF immunization officer who works with her on polio eradication efforts. He adds that “she has a strong sense of humor, and she’s a warm and pleasant woman.”

In April 2006, at Tall’s urging, PolioPlus Program Division Manager Carol Pandak and Africa PolioPlus Committee Chair Ambroise Tshimbalanga-Kasongo traveled to Gambia to survey the situation. It was a discouraging few days for Tall, as government and aid officials repeatedly said there wouldn’t be enough funding to hold an NID. But while she was dropping Pandak off at the airport, Tall spotted Patrick Chang, Taiwan’s ambassador to Gambia, waiting in the departure lounge.

She immediately approached him: “When I saw him, I said, ‘Wait! You are exactly the person we have been waiting for!’” Not only had Chang been a longtime member of the Rotary Club of Taipei, but his government had been a generous donor to Gambia. Tall asked the ambassador whether he could help. Six months later, she had a check from the Taiwanese government for US$150,000 – enough to cover the Subnational Immunization Days (SNIDs) in June, which reached 235,000 children.

Driven to help

A native of Senegal, Tall moved to Gambia 17 years ago. She has a 24-year-old daughter, who is studying computer science in Europe. But she feels a responsibility to all children. Since 1990, she has been regional administrative secretary and public relations officer for the international charity SOS-Kinderdorf, which raises orphaned and abandoned children in community settings and works to prevent child abandonment. As a charter member of the Fajara club, located in a town on Gambia’s coast, she has helped coordinate projects to improve local schools, hospitals, and drinking water.

And last year, even as she was orchestrating her one-woman campaign against polio in Gambia, she was leading an effort to help a young orphaned girl whose eyesight had been badly affected by a brain defect. For more than 12 months, Tall worked with a group of Dutch Rotarians to figure out all the details, and this April was able to bring the girl from Gambia to Amsterdam, where she received an MRI and a full battery of medical tests.

It’s that sort of tenacity that brought Tall to the attention of leaders in both Rotary and her country. As her club’s president in 2003-04, she played an instrumental role in making Gambia’s president, Yahya Jammeh, an honorary Rotarian. With help from Jammeh’s personal contributions, the Fajara club has, for five years in a row, been one of the top Rotary Foundation donors among all the clubs in District 9100, which encompasses 14 countries.

In June 2005, Frank Devlyn, then Foundation trustee chair-elect, asked Tall to head up the Gambia PolioPlus Committee. She accepted without hesitation and immediately went to work, talking about Rotary and the history of PolioPlus whenever she could. She was a “breath of fresh air,” says Cheryl Gregory Faye, former UNICEF representative to Gambia, recalling Tall’s address to a group of high-level Gambian and international officials.

The large turnout for the most recent vaccination push started rather modestly during Tall’s first NID in November 2005, when she found herself the lone Rotarian standing in a square in Manjai, a suburb of the Gambian capital, Banjul. She was a neophyte at immunization drives, surrounded by 17 teenage volunteers who stared up at her, waiting for instructions.

Tall swallowed hard and called some fellow Rotarians on her cell phone. At first, she had difficulty reaching anyone. “It was Saturday, and the idea of spending errand day driving around on dusty roads and knocking on the doors of complete strangers to administer vaccines just seemed too outlandish,” Tall says. “Maybe because the virus was dormant, we became a bit dormant.”

But she didn’t give up. “Let’s get moving,” she told her young helpers.

They spread out, going door to door. When it came time to move on to the next vaccination point, she packed in as many teenagers as she could fit into her rather unroadworthy car, feeding them sandwiches along the way so as not to waste even a minute. All along, she kept calling her fellow Rotarians, a couple of whom eventually joined her.

Tall says the day was one of the most emotional experiences of her life. Her father was a doctor, and as a child, she had once dreamed of a medical career. Now, finally, she was getting the chance to contribute to the health of so many children. “Those two drops seem so insignificant, yet when you see that they can prevent a child from crawling on her stomach for the rest of her life, then you see the magnitude of it,” she explains.

Searching for solutions

After the 2005 NIDs, Tall had high hopes for the next year, but she was disappointed. Even after the donation from Taiwan came through in October 2006, it appeared that it might not be enough for a national campaign. But Tall persevered. Eventually, the Gambian Department of State for Health and Welfare, the Taiwanese benefactors, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization agreed to participate in scaled-back SNIDs that covered the capital and surrounding areas.

When the June effort launched, Gambia’s secretary of state for health and social welfare, the director of health, a local mayor, the Taiwanese ambassador, and the WHO country representative were present, among other dignitaries. The Centre for Innovation Against Malaria, a local charity, joined too, delivering mosquito nets to many of the children targeted by the immunization drive.

This time, Tall, working with the presidents of two local Rotary clubs, had no trouble rallying nine Rotarians and one prospective member to join the other volunteers, all of whom pitched in to deliver vaccine. But on one of those five hot days, the team was having trouble finding children to vaccinate because school was in session. Undeterred, Tall marched to the school and asked whether she could interrupt class to administer the vaccine.

At first, the teacher was hesitant and asked her to come back later. “That’s not possible,” said Tall. She flashed her trademark smile, presented her case, and finally let it be known that she was the Oumou Seydou Tall.

After each of the children in the class had been immunized, the teacher thanked the team.  On the way out, Tall gave her own lesson to one of her teenage volunteers.

“You see,” she told the young man, “you never know what you can get until you’ve asked.”