About 14 lakh (around 53 per cent) children under five years of age have been administered polio drops in Haryana during the sub-national immunisation round of pulse polio 2015-16 held in 13 districts on Sunday. 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 and about 26 lakh children are to be covered during this campaign in the state, said a government’s spokesperson.
The 13 districts include Ambala, Faridabad, Gurgaon, Jhajjar, Karnal, Kurukshetra, Mewat, Palwal, Panchkula, Panipat, Rohtak, Sonipat, and Yamuna Nagar in which booth activity was undertaken on the first day in order to wipe out polio from the State.Haryana Chief Minister Manohar lal inaugurated the pulse polio campaign in district Karnal.
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, said he. About 21,00 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 left out children during the booth activity on first day will be administered polio vaccine drops on June 22 and 23 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 1,000 mobile teams are also working during the activity to cover all children in underserved and poorly approachable areas, added the spokesperson.
He said that it is important to know that wherever, pockets of children remain un-immunised, the polio-virus sustains survival and circulation. With every successive round of pulse polio immunization, the areas of polio-virus circulation get reduced. Next sub national pulse polio immunisation round in above mentioned 13 districts of the State is scheduled to be held on Novermber 22, 2015.