BENGALURU: United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has said that India has the most number of unvaccinated and under-vaccinated children in the world. In Karnataka, paediatric experts say that many children lost out on routine immunisation during the pandemic, compared to 2018.
“We have observed that in Karnataka, routine immunisation has definitely taken a beating. When I see my patients’ cards, a lot of vaccines have been missed, and some of them had to be given last year. This is not good, because immunisation delayed is immunisation denied. The baby could catch a disease,” says Dr Ranjan Kumar Pejavar, President, National Neonatalogy Forum, head of neonatology department at Meenakshi Hospitals in Bengaluru.
According to data available with TNIE from the Health Management Information System, the target set and achieved, when compared to 2018, is comparatively low, but Dr Rajani Nagesh Rao, Joint Director, Immunisation, Health and Family Welfare, believes that the target for full immunisation programmes have been achieved in most of the districts, except some districts like Bagalkot, Vijayapura, Haveri and Udupi, where it is less, compared to earlier years.
“I agree that in some districts, children have missed out on immunisation. The main reason is that a lot of migration and reverse migration has happened, especially during May, and this is continuing in some regions. The other reason is that many staffers and ASHA workers are occupied with Covid cases and vaccination-related work. In May especially, we couldn’t have outreach sessions, as schools and anganwadis were closed. But data gathering and entering are also contributing factors,” she said.
Experts point out that this difference in number of children missing out on vaccines was more significant in booster doses, compared to birth doses. Citing that many children are coming up with chicken pox, diphtheria and typhoid infections already, due to their vaccination schedules being missed, Dr Sreenivasa S, Chairman, National IMA Standing Committee for Child Health, says, “Booster vaccines for diphtheria and typhoid kind of vaccines, which are given to children aged 16-23 months, and again between 5 and 6 years of age. We have seen children coming with infections related to this, due to non-vaccination,” he said.
The doctors also suggest that the backlog has to be given immediately. “Most of the vaccines can be given, even if delayed. There are very few vaccines which cannot be given beyond a certain date. But we must educate parents and re-adjust the vaccine schedule. They shouldn’t take missing of vaccines lightly,” Dr Ranjan says.
Meanwhile, doctors call for rigorous public campaigns to be held across the state. There should be campaigns and door-to-door data collection on how many children have missed which vaccines, so that it becomes easier to do micro planning. However, Dr Rajani explains that the Karnataka health department is already planning such a campaign, and will be starting this very soon in every district.“There has never been zero vaccination in the state. We couldn’t do outreach sessions, which used to happen at the facilities on Tuesdays and Fridays. We are putting in all our efforts now to bring them back.”