Indore: Health department has claimed to have vaccinated 100 per cent children from 9 months to 15 years of age to protect them from measles and rubella diseases.
The department, which launched the campaign on January 15 covered over 8.9 lakh children in one-and-a-half months. Before Indore, four other districts including Rewa achieved cent percent target while some of them went beyond it.
“We had target of 8.89 lakh children. We have covered over 8.91 lakh children. Even after achieving the target, we are continuously vaccinating children and also trying to reach more children,” chief medical and health officer Dr Pravin Jadia said.
He said health department achieved target in Indore district with help of ASHA and Aanganwadi workers who visited every home in their areas to vaccinate children.
“Initially, we faced problems as private schools didn’t agree to it while parents feared to get their wards vaccinated in schools,” Dr Jadia said.
The health department has authorised private hospitals to vaccinate school students for free. The department will provide injections to them. The campaign that started for one month has been extended. Parents can still go to private hospitals to get their wards vaccinated. Auto-disposable syringes were used for vaccination. Syringes are rendered non-usable after single use.
MEASLES FATALITY
Measles is a childhood infection caused by a virus. … Also called rubeola, measles can be serious and even fatal for small children. While death rates have been falling worldwide as more children receive the measles vaccine, the disease still kills more than 100,000 people a year, most under the age of 5.
MEASLES CASES
Measles cases in India have dropped significantly by a whopping 43 per cent between 2015 and 2016 for the first time and are expected to dramatically fall this year too as India builds on its polio eradication campaign experience to eliminate measles by 2020, latest data released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) shows. India reported 17,250 measles cases in 2016, down from 30,168 in 2015. By 2018, India plans to reach 40 crore children with the measles vaccine, which is expected to considerably reduce the disease burden and help India meet its 2020 elimination target.
