Indore
The first phase of the year’s pulse polio campaign will be launched across districts on February 27.
A meeting of the District Task Force to prepare for launching the campaign and to coordinate between various departments, was held on Monday in which officials from all departments discussed the ways to cover most of the eligible kids.
Children below five years will be covered on the first day of the campaign launched at booth level.
According to nodal officer Dr Tarun Gupta, the department has been entrusted with a target of administering polio drops to 5,60,000 children in the district and they are aiming to achieve over 80 per cent of the mark on the very first day of the three-day campaign.
“We are targeting to administer the polio drops at 3,600 booths to be set up across the district with the help of paramedical and nursing students, and our health activists. On the first day, i.e. on February 27, we will launch the drive on booths and on the next two days i.e. February 28 and March 1, the activists will reach every doorstep to administer drops to those who couldn’t reach the booth on Sunday,” Dr Gupta said.
The official further said that vaccination against polio started in the country in 1978 with the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI). The last reported cases of wild polio in India were in West Bengal and Gujarat on January 13, 2011.
On 27 March 2014, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared India a polio-free country since no cases of wild polio have been reported since then.
