About 14.50 lakh (about 55 per cent) children under five years of age were administered polio drops in Haryana under the sub-national immunisation round of pulse polio in 13 districts of the State on Sunday.
A spokesperson of the State Government said that this campaign will continue for another two days by way of house-to-house activity to trace and administer polio drops to the left out children on booth day.
About 26 lakh children are to be covered during this campaign in the State. 13 districts including Ambala, Faridabad, Gurgaon, Jhajjar, Karnal, Kurukshetra, Mewat, Palwal, Panchkula, Panipat, Rohtak, Sonipat and Yamuna Nagar witnessed booth activity undertaken on the first day in order to wipe out polio from the state on Sunday.
In order to smoothly carry out this campaign, a total of 10,636 booths were setup in the State and these were manned by about 42,000 health officials, volunteers, Anganwari Workers, ASHA etc. About 2100 officers and officials supervised the activity apart from independent monitors of NPSP-WHO. This activity was preceded by undertaking awareness campaign through print media, Radio, TV, miking, drum beating and other IEC activities.
The spokesperson said that the left out children during the booth activity on first day will be administered polio vaccine drops on April 27 and 28 through house-to-house teams. During this round, special attention would be paid to high risk areas like slums, isolated hutments, brick kilns, floating and migrating population and construction sites so that no child is left uncovered in these areas. About 1000 mobile teams are also working during the activity to cover all children in underserved and poorly approachable areas.
It is important to know that wherever, pockets of children remain un-immunized, the Polio-virus sustains survival and circulation. With every successive round of Pulse Polio Immunization, the areas of Polio-virus circulation get reduced. The next sub national pulse polio immunization round in 13 districts of the state is scheduled to be held on June 21, added he.