Mission Indradhanush raised India’s immunisation coverage by 7 per cent in a year.
In February, the programme will also take off in 66 districts in North East states
Health Ministry’s Mission Indradhanush (MI), a programme on vaccination for children launched last year has helped India attain a seven per cent increase in immunisation coverage as compared to the one percent raise that had become a norm each year from 2009 to 2013.
According to the Health Management Information System of the union health ministry, a total of 117 lakh immunisation sessions have been conducted from April 15, 2016 to January 13, 2017, which include both MI and Routine Immunisation (RI) programmes, which go on all year round. In a total of 28.7 lakh MI sessions conducted since the commencement of this programme till December 2016, 55 lakh children got ‘fully’ vaccinated. Now, in February 2017, the programme will reach out to 66 more districts in eight north-eastern states, including Sikkim.
Mission Indradhanush was planned in two phases. Spread over April 2015 to July 2015 and October 2015 to January 2016, a total of 1.42 crore children and 36.7 lakh women were immunized in 20 lakh immunization sessions.
Across India, the MI campaign runs between 7th and 14th of every month at various centres across the nation. For instance, in Delhi more than designated 1,000 centres provide free vaccines against 11 diseases like tuberculosis, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, chicken pox, influenza, meningitis, and polio.
“Mission Indradhanush has been able to fill in the gap in fully vaccinating children under the routine immunisation programme,” Union Health Minister JP Nadda said.
“Immunisation is one of the most cost-effective public health interventions for protecting children from preventable life-threatening conditions, and help prevent under-5 mortality,” Nadda said.
Meanwhile, another milestone achieved last year as part of expanding the coverage of full immunisation at reducing child mortality was the launch of the Rotavirus vaccine as part of the Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) in the country. “Earlier we had generic vaccinations on Saturdays and Wednesdays,” says Mithilesh, an Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM) worker, who has been working in the field since 2006. “In the last two years, we have seen people come forward and get vaccinations done on their own. There has been a flux of people,” she added.
World view on India’s progress
Despite these achievements, the health sector in India shows poor expenditure towards immunisation as compared to other countries in the same league. According to a recent paper released by Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), while small steps are being taken, there is a long way to go for India to be known as a healthy country. As per the data, in 2014, India spent only Rs 272 per person on free vaccination and Rs 1,361 in total, while Vietnam showed four times that. Mexico, Brazil, Turkey and China are known to spend much more on free vaccinations and also cover serious illnesses like cervical cancer and pneumonia in their programs.
Pneumonia and diarrhoea remain the biggest problems that still need to be tackled when it comes to immunisation program. A child under age five is dies due to these two illnesses every two minutes in India.
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