BHUBANESWAR: The State Government has planned to ramp up immunisation drive under Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI) 2.0 in five districts from December 2. Pregnant women and children dropped out from regular immunisation drive will be covered.
The four-round drive will be conducted in Gajapati, Kandhamal, Koraput, Malakangiri and Rayagada districts from December 2. Subsequent three rounds will be conducted in January, February and March next year in order to achieve 100 per cent immunisation coverage.
Director of National Health Mission (NHM) Shalini Pandit has directed district Collectors to carry out a thorough head count in all villages, urban localities and high risk areas to ensure that no child and pregnant woman is left out.
The IMI 2.0 drive will be conducted on working days excluding regular immunisation day, Sunday and holidays. The first round is scheduled to begin from December 2 and subsequent rounds will start from January 6, February 3 and March 2, 2020.
Pandit said first IMI drive was conducted in Khurda (Bhubaneswar urban) and Ganjam district in 2017-18 and both districts achieved more than 90 per cent full immunisation coverage with active involvement of field level functionaries and district administration.
“They will be awarded for the same by the Centre on the occasion of Pulse Polio Silver Jubilee on October 31 at New Delhi. The experience gained from the first drive will help frontline health workers do better this time,” she added.
The head count survey will be conducted by the ASHA and Anganwadi workers under the supervision of the ANM and sector supervisors. Collectors have been asked to prepare the list of all due beneficiaries based on the head count survey and upload in IMI web portal by November 15.
Though the immunisation drive targets to cover children below two years of age and the pregnant women, all high risk areas will have special immunisation sessions and all beneficiaries identified will be given their age specific vaccines.
JE vaccination from Nov 11
The Health and Family Welfare department is also going for vaccination of children, aged between one-year to 15 years against Japaneses Encephalitis (JE). The vaccination drive to continue for one month from November 11 will cover seven districts.
Health Secretary Dr Pramod Kumar Meherda said JE vaccination in 17 districts has been completed. This time, an estimated 23.62 lakh children in Angul, Boudh, Bhadrak, Bargarh, Balangir, Jagatsinghpur and Nayagarh will be covered, he added.