The Mission Indradhanush, an ambitious immunisation programme by the Central Government, was launched in Jharkhand on Tuesday. The mission aims to provide medical security to children of areas where vaccination programmes have not yielded desired results thus increasing the probability of mortality among children by three to six times.
The programme launched simultaneously at other places in the country is likely to result in quantum jump in immunisation coverage (from 65 per cent to 90 per cent) by targeting six ‘focus districts’—Pakur, Sahebganj, Godda, Giridih, Deoghar and Dhanbad. According to Health department officials, around 2.5-lakh children in Jharkhand are missing out on basic vaccines that includes around 1.04-lakh children either unimmunised or partially immunised in the six focus districts in Jharkhand.
“A large part of population in Jharkhand lives in forests and remote areas. Children living in these areas are deprived of vaccines therefore there is a need to identify those children and ensure their immunisation (against diseases),” said Health Minister Ram Chandra Chandravanshi.
The Mission has been planned by Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry, intended to expand immunisation coverage in India to at least 90 per cent children in next five years. The programme provides immunisation against seven life-threatening diseases — diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, tuberculosis, measles, Hepatitis B, Pneumonia, Japanese Encephalitis and meningitis.
The target areas where the ambitious programme will focus are areas with vacant sub-centres where no auxiliary nurse midwife has been posted for more than three months, villages with three or more consecutively missed routine immunisation (RI) session because of ANMs on leave and other similar reasons, high risk areas identified by the polio eradication programme where RI services are poorly covered, underserved ad hard-to-reach populations, areas with low RI and small villages, hamlets not having independent RI sessions. The campaign will be conducted in two phases beginning from April-July, 2015 which marks phase-1 and phase-2 will be conducted from September to December, 2015. Each round will be conducted for upto 7-days from Monday of each week.
“A special team has been constituted for monitoring Mission Indradhanush and one nodal officer has been appointed in each district,” said Director-in-Chief (Health Services), Sumant Mishra. The targeted beneficiaries under the project include children less than two years of age and pregnant women. Significantly, mobile immunization will be started to increase coverage of children.