2nd phase of Mission Indradhanush launched. Health Ministry aims at immunising 90% children by 2020

Buoyed by the success of the first phase of 'Mission Indradhanush', the government today launched second phase of the ambitious immunisation programme focussing on 352 districts and assured the states

By: Agencies | | Updated: October 6, 2015 10:23 am

Buoyed by the success of the first phase of ‘Mission Indradhanush’, the government today launched second phase of the ambitious immunisation programme focussing on 352 districts and assured the states of full support for achieving the targets. Launching the second phase of ‘Mission Indradhanush’, Union Health Minister J P Nadda interacted with health ministers and department secretaries of states through video-conferencing to enquire about their preparedness, and said his Ministry aims to achieve full immunisation of more than 90 percent children by 2020. ‘Mission Indradhanush’ aims at fully immunising more than 89 lakh children who are either unvaccinated or partially vaccinated and those who have not been covered during routine immunisation for various reasons. The Mission aims to immunise them against seven life-threatening but vaccine-preventable diseases — diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, tuberculosis, polio, measles and hepatitis-B.

In the second phase, 352 districts have been selected including 279 mid-priority districts, 33 from the North-East states and 40 districts from the phase one, where a large number of missed-out children were detected. ‘The second phase will commence from October 7 for a week. This will be followed by week-long intensified immunisation drives for three consecutive months starting from November 7 and December 7, 2015 and January 7, 2016. The Health Ministry will seek to reach an estimated 45 lakh children who have never received vaccines or remain partially- immunised in the second phase. (Read: JP Nadda: Mission Indradhanush to cover two more deadly diseases)

‘The campaign will revisit the 40 districts because they did not meet even 50 per cent of their target population during the first phase,’ an official said. Nadda, during his interaction, exhorted states to leave no stone unturned to ensure that the left-out and missed out children of the routine immunisation programme in the country are provided full protection under this nationwide initiative. ‘We aim to achieve more than 90 percent full immunisation in the country by 2020 under Mission Indradhanush,’ he said. Nadda said the second phase aims to cover all children below 2 years of age and pregnant women with full immunisation against seven vaccine preventable diseases. He urged the states to put into practice the lessons learnt during the first phase for ‘sustained gains’, and said this would not only help increase the immunisation coverage but would also contribute to strengthen the health system. (Read: JP Nadda asks states to support ‘Mission Indradhanush’ in its second phase)

Health Ministry sources said that it also plans to arm over 250,000 auxiliary midwives and nurses (ANMs) with hand-held computers to guide them in exigencies and allow the government to track immunisation activities in real-time. ‘By all standards and assessments, phase one was a great success and in many ways it surprised us also. The kind of commitment and organisation the states showed. In total, we had taken 201 districts in Phase-I. Those were the districts which contributed 50 percent of assessed missed-out children. ‘In Phase-I, we have managed to vaccinate 75 lakh children. The happier news is out of the possible cohort of 30-40 per cent which were partially vaccinated, 20 lakh have been fully vaccinated. Almost 50 percent of the children we have been able to fully vaccinate. The methodology was robust, our micro plans worked,’ additional secretary C K Mishra said.

The first round of the first phase started from April 7, 2015 on World health Day in 201 high focus districts in 28 states and carried for more than a week.This was followed by three rounds of more than a week in the months of April, May-June and July. The 201 high focus districts account for nearly 50 percent of all unvaccinated or partially vaccinated children in the country. Of these, 82 districts account for nearly 25 percent of all unvaccinated or partially vaccinated children of the country. ‘Within the districts, the Mission focused on 4,00,000 high-risk settlements identified as pockets with low coverage due to geographic, demographic, ethnic and other operational challenges during the four rounds of Mission Indradhanush, 9.4 lakh sessions were held, during which about 2 crore vaccines were administered to the children and pregnant women. During these immunisation rounds, 75.5 lakh children were vaccinated and about 20 lakh children were fully vaccinated,’ an official statement said. (Read: ‘Mission Indradhanush’ begins today, aims at immunising all children below 2 yrs)
It said more than 20 lakh pregnant women were vaccinated with tetanus toxoid vaccine during these four rounds. To combat the problem of diarrhoea, zinc tablets and ORS packets were distributed for free of cost to all children to protect them against diarrhoea. More than 16 lakh ORS packets and about 57 lakh zinc tablets were distributed to children during these four rounds of Mission Indradhanush, it said.

Source: PTI

Image source: India.com

Published: October 6, 2015 10:09 am | Updated:October 6, 2015 10:23 am

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