The Health Department after the unfortunate deaths of four children at loinga village of Patan in Palamu, tried its level best to brush aside the apprehensions gathered since then in order to restore faith of the people in massive vaccination programme continuing in the State.
Director, Health Services, Dr Sumant Mishra accepting the trust deficit caused, maintained that all the desired machineries were in place and would remain so in future as well.
Addressing a press conference called to clear the air and build right atmosphere among masses on Friday, the Health Director also expressed hope that reports on the children deaths are expected to take two-three weeks more.
“All the seized vaccine vials and syringes have been sent to CDl Kasauli and CDl Kolkata for further examination as per the ‘adverse event following immunization’ protocol. We have requested CDl Kasauli to send us the reports as early as possible but things are not fully it our hands. We expect that it would take 15-20 more days and only after that we would be able to tell anything conclusively about the reasons behind the unfortunate deaths of four children at loinga,” said Mishra.
He, on the occasion, also stressed that all the prerequisites and protocols were in place starting from maintenance of cold chain, to transportation of the vaccines and quality of the batches before they were administered to the children of the village and no apathy existed.
“Not only in loinga case but in all cases we have set guidelines to handle the vaccines. They are strictly followed and were followed in here as well. As far as condition of the anganwadi centre where the vaccines were kept that day is concerned, you all know we lack in infrastructure. There may be some lacuna at the time of vaccination like some contamination or improper sanitization. All this can be verified only after the reports come,” added the Director Health Services when asked about a reference mention into the preliminary report the team of experts had submitted which was exclusively accessed and reported by The Pioneer on the same day.
The official, flanked by representatives of Unicef, WHO and UNDP, used the occasion to restore faith of the people on immunization programme which has taken a dent after the horrific incident. He admitted that there may be some setback to the programme under which the Department has claimed to be covering around 8.3 lakh children every year for PHC- OPV, Penta, fIPV, measles, JE, DPT and TT.
“This may be the case but we are here to assure everyone that our universal immunization programme is robust and completely safe. We are going to continue like before. We have been able to bring down infant mortality rate and neonatal mortality rate bellow the national average up to 21 and 29, respectively in Jharkhand through institutional immunization only which consist of 90 per cent to the total vaccination done.
No incident like that had happened in the past and we believe that the loinga case is just an aberration,” said Dr Sumant Mishra.
The Department following the deaths had suspended ANM Draupadi Pandey while show cause notices were issued to the Palamu Civil Surgeon and others.
The report quoting in details about the chain of events having taken place on the fateful day on Saturday when vaccination for measles, Japanese Encephalitis, DPT and tetanus was done at the village, claimed that all the doses were administered from the vial provided.