The special vaccination campaign against Japanese Encephalitis that was launched on May 25 has been extended by a week to ensure that all children between the age group of 1 and 15 years could be immunised against the dreaded disease.
Health Minister Sidharthnath Singh said so far 78.30 lakh children between 1 and 15 years of age have been immunised. Campaign has been launched to make people aware on the menace of the disease and motivate them to take part in the campaign, he said in a statement on Sunday.
This special campaign has been launched in 38 districts and it will end on Sunday.
“As the Government has got a terrific response, we have decided to extend this campaign by a week. In this 18 day campaign we had targeted to reach out to 88 lakh children and we have vaccinated over 78 lakh children so far. Thus we achieved over 90 per cent of our target in this period,” he said and directed officials to extend the campaign by a week so that the target could be achieved.
Almost whole of eastern Uttar Pradesh is in the grip of Japanese Encephalitis with districts like Gorakhpur, Deoria, Gonda, Basti, Sidharthnagar, Sankabrinagar, Kushinagar, Maharajganj, Balrampur, Ghazipur and Azamgarh being declared as encephalitis affected districts.
The area is endemic for Japanese Encephalitis but in the past six years, children have been dying of other forms of viral encephalitis, the exact cause of which is unclear. One possibility is a water-borne virus present in contaminated water and is called AES. The diseases cause head aches and vomiting and can lead to comas, brain dysfunctions, seizures and inflammations of the heart and kidney. The disease is predictable and preventable.
The annual monsoon fills parched paddy fields, which bear the mosquitoes that spread Japanese Encephalitis from pigs to humans, devastating malnourished children with low immunity. Another strain of the disease — acute encephalitis syndrome—spreads through contaminated water. Residents defecate in the fields, contaminating the ground water.
He said that AES spreads through contaminated water. People should be asked to drink pure or piped water. The NGOs in collaboration with district administration should run awareness campaigns to keep the surroundings clean. “The Union Government has already launched cleanliness drive and all the people should actively participate in this campaign,” he said.
The disease has so far killed several thousand children in last three decades with 2005 being the worst in which over 1,500 children had died. In 2006 a vaccination drive was launched, but that had failed to give desired result.