More than 2.63 crore children across the country received the first dose of measles-containing vaccine (MCV) between April 2022 and March 2023, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya told the Lok Sabha on Friday.
Mandaviya was responding to a question on whether an estimated 11 lakh children in India missed their first measles vaccine dose in 2022, as stated in a report by the World Health Organisation and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
“While the World Health Organisation (WHO) publishes various reports on Immunisation, under Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP), data regarding Measles Containing Vaccines (MCV) administered free of cost to all eligible children is captured in the Health Management Information System (HMIS).
“As per HMIS, a total of 2,63,63,270 children received 1st dose of MCV throughout the country against the estimated target of 2,63,84,580 children in the period between April 2022 to March 2023,” Mandaviya said.
Listing steps taken by the government in coordination with the states and union territories to ensure that all eligible children receive missed or due doses of vaccines, including MCV, Mandaviya said that special catch up campaigns of Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI) are carried out in areas of low immunisation coverage to vaccinate all unvaccinated or partially vaccinated children.
Also, IMI 3.0 and IMI 4.0 were carried out in select districts with low immunisation coverage whereas IMI 5.0 was carried out in all districts of the country. In IMI 5.0, the age for administration of missed doses of MCV was increased from 2 years to 5 years.
Additionally, states and union territories have conducted Outbreak Response Immunisation (ORI) and Supplementary Immunisation Activities (SIA) to increase the coverage of MCV, Mandaviya stated.
Mandaviya”s junior Minister of State for Health SP Baghel in a written reply in the Lower House said that investigations into the reported data breach on the CoWIN portal have ascertained that there was no bulk data download from its beneficiary database.
The CoWIN portal of the Union health ministry already has adequate security measures and safeguards for data privacy with Web Application Firewall (WAF), Anti-DDoS and SSL/TLS (regular vulnerability assessment) identity and access management, the minister said.
The CoWIN portal is the repository of all data of people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19. “There were media reports of apparent breach of CoWIN data of beneficiaries who have received Covid vaccination in the country. The matter was investigated and analysed by CERT-In under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and it was ascertained that there was no bulk data download from Co-WIN beneficiary database,” Baghel said. In view of media reports on CoWIN data breach, additional steps have been taken to strengthen data safety on the portal, he said.