BENGALURU: Karnataka will vaccinate around 64 lakh children between the ages of 0-5 years against polio on Sunday and Health Minister Dr K Sudhakar has urged parents to ensure that their children are immunised. Polio vaccine drive was supposed to be held on January 17, but National Immunisation Day was postponed to January 31 due to the Covid vaccine launch, he said.
“Even if children have been vaccinated earlier, they must be vaccinated again. There is no side-effect from this. No case of polio was found in the past 10-11 years in India and we have been declared polio-free. However, since polio is still found in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we have to administer the vaccine mandatorily,” Sudhakar said.
The polio vaccine programme, which will cover 64,07,930 children in the state, will be flagged off by Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa at his home office. Karnataka has 85,05,060 doses of polio vaccine, 1,10,179 vaccinators, 6,645 supervisor teams, 904 mobile teams, and 32,908 booths across the state for polio vaccination.
3 serotypes of POLIO VIRUS
No cases globally in past six years
WHO declared it eradicated in 2015. No case globally since 1999
All polio cases of this serotype. India’s last case of wild polio virus was in West Bengal, January 2011. WHO declared India polio-free on March 27, 2014.