Survey of village informants--an alternate method to estimate paralytic poliomyelitis prevalence in rural area.

Lameness surveys were conducted among children of 0-14 year age group in 60 villages of a Community Development Block of district Ambala in Haryana State. The methods used were: village informants survey and house-to-house survey. Village informants were village chief, school teachers, primary health care workers, traditional birth attendants and several prominent persons from each street/neighbourhood of the village. These informants located lame children in their locality. Subsequently, a house-to-house search for identification of lame children was made in all the 60 sampled villages. Physicians later on, examined the lame children to diagnose paralytic poliomyelitis. Estimate of the prevalence rate of lower extremity paralytic poliomyelitis in 0-14 year age group was found to be 7.9/1000 in village informants survey. This did not differ significantly from the rate of 8.8/1000 revealed by house-to-house survey in the same community (p greater than 0.05). Time required to complete village informants survey was almost one third and costs were also about half as compared to house-to-house survey. Therefore, village informants based lameness survey is a rapid and economical alternative for the estimation of poliomyelitis prevalence in rural communities.