Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI) 5.0, the nationwide vaccine catch-up campaign, which focusses on reaching zero-dose children aged between 0-5 years and pregnant women to ensure that they do not miss out on any vaccination, was launched in the State on Monday.
Health Minister Veena George inaugurated the Statewide campaign in Kerala, by administering oral polio vaccine to 3-year-old Mahia from Assam at the Peroorkada district model hospital.
Inaugurating IMI 5.0, Ms. George appealed to all to take part in the campaign and to ensure that the children were administered all life-saving vaccinations. Immunisation at appropriate ages can save children from many vaccine-preventable diseases. It was a matter of concern that despite several rounds of measles vaccination, the disease continued to persist in many pockets in the State, Ms. George said.
New challenges
She said that the State had, through years of systematic efforts at immunisation, managed to keep at bay, many vaccine-preventable diseases. At a time when the State was facing new challenges in the health sector, care should be taken that Kerala did not go behind in an area that it has been doing well traditionally.
During the campaign, vaccination against 12 Vaccine-Preventable Diseases (VPD) — diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, tuberculosis, hepatitis B, meningitis and pneumonia, Haemophilus influenzae type B infections, Japanese encephalitis, rotavirus vaccine, pneumococcal conjugate vaccine and measles-rubella would be provided.
In three phases
IMI 5.0 initiative is also intended to be the big leap for eliminating measles and rubella in the country by ensuring that every child under 5 years of age has completed the two-dose schedule of Measles and Rubella Containing Vaccine (MRCV).
IMI 5.0 will be implemented in three phases, from August 7-11, September 11 to 16 and from October 9 to 14, when all children who might have missed out any vaccines under the Universal Immunisation Programme will have an opportunity to receive those vaccines.
Trained health workers
The Health department estimates that 18,744 pregnant women, 61,752 children up to the age of two years and 54,837 children in the 2-5 years age group are either partially immunised or unimmunised.
Trained health workers will take up the vaccination campaign and administer vaccines to children and pregnant women through 10,086 planned sessions. Priority will be given to geographic regions which have been falling behind in immunisation.
