Jaipur: In its final effort to achieve the target of vaccinating 90% of children fully against certain diseases by end of December, health department has issued directions to all districts to step up efforts. Officials claimed that they have reached closer to the set target of achieving 90% full immunization. A health department official said that they have vaccinated 89% of children fully in the state till date.
The official said that still few days are left for reaching the deadline, they have stepped up efforts for vaccinating children against certain diseases by organising sessions of vaccination in different parts of the state, especially those areas, where they have faced resistance from the community. However, the health department claimed that Pregnant and Child Tracking System (PCTS), which is an online portal launched by the health department, is showing that the percentage of fully immunized children has increased to 89%.
“We have done micro-planning to achieve the target. We prepared line-listing of children who were left out from national vaccination programme, or those children who were never vaccinated or partiality vaccinated. On the basis of that, the health department approached to achieve the target,” said the official.
However, it is most likely that the Centre will not believe PCTS data and it will conduct its own survey to find out if the state has achieved the target for vaccinated set by the Centre for the state. Earlier, the state’s vaccination figures were not encouraging. According to national family health survey -4 (NFHS) 2015-16, which is conducted in every 10 years, the percentage of children (12 months to 23 months) fully immunized (BCG, measles and 3 doses each of polio and DPT) was 55%.
The health department had an uphill task to increase 55% to 90% by the end of December, which was given by the Centre. Health department also implemented Mission Indradhanush, which was aimed to increase full immunization coverage to atleast 90% children by December 2018. The salient feature of Mission Indradhanush was to cover unvaccinated and partially vaccinated children in areas with low immunization coverage, in both urban and rural areas. Mission Indradhanush did not target to reduce post-natal death rate but it targeted to reduce diseases and death due to vaccine preventable diseases.
In 2017-18, there were 2.2 lakh children who were vaccinated under Mission Indradhanush in the state.
