ROURKELA: The tribal-dominated Sundargarh has earned the distinction of being the only district in Odisha and sixth in the country to undertake field research as part of a pilot project of the Union Ministries of Health and Education to develop school curriculum for immunisation.
The project titled ‘V Shiksha’ envisages to introduce a chapter in Environmental Science (EVS) of Class VI on ‘Importance of Vaccination’ across the country from next academic session. It is part of the country’s Immunisation Agenda which aims to reduce the number of zero-dose children by 50 per cent by 2030.
Sources said one district each in Odisha, Rajasthan and Karnataka and three districts of Assam have been selected for the pilot project. Accordingly, 16 CBSE-affiliated schools in Sundargarh were covered with different project activities. Ten such schools were identified as ‘Intervention Schools’ in which students of Class VI were trained and educated on different aspects of immunisation and its need for fighting vaccine-preventable diseases. The rest six schools treated as ‘Non-Intervention Schools’ were left without any intervention.
Additionally, opinions and feedback were collected from key stakeholders including education officials, teachers, parents and health personnel regarding development and designing of content for the school curriculum.
After three months, a Delhi-based third party agency assessed the outlook and level of knowledge on importance of vaccination of the Intervention and Non-Intervention Schools. The assessment report would be submitted to the Central government soon, said the sources.
District chief medical and public health officer Dr GP Mahanta said the pilot project aims to develop and introduce curriculum on importance of vaccination for primary school children and teachers as a training module. The long-term objective is to create children as vaccination messengers and teachers as vaccination ambassadors, fostering school-led community engagement to further strengthen vaccine confidence and uptake.
He said curriculum on ‘Importance of Vaccination” would help students understand bacteria and viruses, spread of diseases, effective ways to prevent the spreading of germs, identify the role and importance of vaccination, combat misinformation with improved vaccine confidence and also advocate for personal, family and community health.
Both students and teachers would lead the community-level advocacy for vaccination which would go a long way in fully eliminating zero-dose children and effectively fight vaccine-preventable diseases, Dr Mahanta added.
In a letter on May 8 last year, the mission director of National Health Mission (NHM), Odisha had informed the Sundargarh collector about the pilot project of the two ministries. The collector was asked to involve the district education office and health administration in the research being conducted by the India wing of the global health consultant John Snow, Inc (JSI).