The Centre has planned second phase of Mission Indradhanush in seven districts of Telangana State. The objective of the Mission Indradhanush is to close the immunization gap and achieves more than 90% full immunization of children by 2020. The target beneficiaries are pregnant women and 0-2 years children and any other children due for vaccination.
In view of this drive, an orientation workshop/meet was conducted at IIHFW on Saturday. The meet was chaired by Suresh Chanda, IAS (Principal Secretary, Medical, Health & Family Welfare). The meeting was attended by Dr Buddha Prakash M Jyoti, IAS CHFW & MD (NHM) and Dr Laitha Kumari, Director of Health & Family Welfare and Dr Gaurav Uppal, IAS, Addl. Commissioner, GHMC as special invitee to the meeting. The participants are DMHOs, DIOs, DPMOS. And parners like WHO, UNICEF.
Telangana State has a birth cohort of 6.3 lakhs/annum and provides vaccination against life-threatening diseases. Vaccine preventable diseases in spite of being operational for 30 years now, the left out and drop out rate is high. To improve the vaccination coverage, the Centre is launching phase II of Mission Indradhanush in 297 medium priority districts on October 7.
The first phase has Adilabad and Mahabubnagar which showed beneficial results. In the second phase, the medium priority districts are: Hyderabad, Rangareddy, Khammam, Nizambad, Medak, Nalgonda, Karimnagar. The Telangana government has requested the Centre to include Warangal for phase II and now rest of the Telangana is for MI second phase. Seven days of activity will cover all the vaccine antigens to missing children less than 2 years of age and pregnant women for 1st TT, 2nd TT and TT Booster doses. Head count will be done by door-to-door survey and beneficiaries’ list enlisted and MI sessions will be planned. The immunization gaps can be filled and aims to achieve 90% fully immunization by 2020, according to Commissioner of Health & Family welfare Telangana State. (NSS)