The three-day polio vaccine campaign would be launched in eight districts of the State from April 20 to 22, in which the children below five years will be administered Trivalent Oral Polio Vaccine (TOPV) for the last time.
After April 22, the administration of trivalent vaccine will be stopped and then onwards bivalent vaccine will be administered.
The vaccine has been sent to all the included eight districts. Notably, the trivalent vaccine is effective against all the three types 1, 2 and 3 and until now it was the one being used. Since 1999 type-2 virus was not found anywhere around the world. Hence, the trivalent vaccine was considered unnecessary and 156 countries of the world including India will stop using will stop using Trivalent vaccine from April 24, 2016.
The eight districts included in the list were Vidisha, Alirajpur, Ashok Nagar, Barwani, Damoh, Jhabua, Raisen and Sagar.
In these districts, the polio vaccine will be administered on April 20, 21 and 22. This campaign will be different from the previous campaigns as there are no polio booths, but the vaccinators will go door to door and administer all the children below five years.
In this campaign more than 19.20 lakh children under the age of five will be vaccinated. For this 19, 53, 153 doses of vaccine have been arranged and sent to the districts.
In this campaign 21, 958 vaccinators will work towards administrating the vaccine. To keep the vaccine safe and away from contamination 262 deep freezers will be arranged. For this campaign Asha ANM and health department’s officials have been specially trained.
The vaccination in-charge Santosh Shukla said that all the arrangements for the campaign has been made and there will be 529 mobile teams for the vaccination, also there will be 315 transit booths as well, for the campaign. The whole world will switch from TOPV to BOPV and on April 25 and all the stock of TOPV will be returned as it will become obsolete.