Indore: Health department sees opportunity to achieve vaccination target

Indore (Madhya Pradesh): With most schools opening on Monday, the district health officials see an opportunity to complete the vaccination of kids aged 12-14 years which has been running at a snail’s pace for the past 10 days.

Health department officials have reviewed the list of centres in various schools and also added more schools according to the requirement raised by the officials of the school education department. The department has been targeting vaccination of about 1.15 lakh kids of the age group and as many as 55,178 kids have got inoculated since the drive started on March 23. However, the pace of vaccination is not according to the expectations of the health officials who were targeting vaccination of over 40,000 kids on the first day.

‘Vaccination pace will be increasing’

‘Many schools will open on Monday for the new session and we believe that the pace of vaccination of kids will increase as the students can easily get inoculated while attending classes. We’ve reviewed the list of centres and increased some centres as the school education department officials see a potential in them to get more students immunised. We appeal to the people to get their kids vaccinated as soon as possible. It would be better if kids got both doses of vaccination by May. Taking the first dose now will get the kids fully protected as they can take both doses before May. We’re also connecting with school education department officials and asking them to ensure the vaccination of kids in schools’ — Dr Tarun Gupta, immunisation officer

‘Focusing on 15-17-year-olds’

‘We’re also emphasising due vaccination of students between 15 and 17 years of age to complete the target of vaccination in the district as soon as possible’ — Dr BS Saitya, chief medical and health officer