The detection of a fresh case in New Delhi last week has forced the Centre to order a review of the ongoing polio programme.
Centre orders revamp of national surveillance project
NEW DELHI: The detection of a fresh case in New Delhi last week has forced the Centre to order a review of the ongoing polio programme. Dissatisfied with the results of the National Polio Surveillance Project, health minister Ambumani Ramadoss said the programme was not working well and needed a revamp.
India reported the most polio cases in the world in 2007, 831 out of a global total of 1,261. Bihar and Uttar Pradesh led the way.
Though no fresh case of the deadly P1 virus, which more often than not paralyses its victims, was reported in these states last year, there has been a sudden rise in the prevalence of the milder P3 strain.
The Delhi case, in which the dreaded disease claimed a 14-month-old girl from Bihar, came to light at a time when the government was preparing to announce India P1-free. The family of the child claimed she had been administered 11 doses of polio vaccine.
Incidentally, it was observed at a recent meeting of the India Expert Advisory Group on polio that due to accelerated immunisation and the use of monovalent oral polio vaccine-1 (mOPV1) in 2007, P1 transmission had come down considerably and immunity to the strain among children had gone up.
The polio eradication programme that received one of the highest budget allocations the last two years, saw a cut this year from Rs1,300 crore to Rs1,050 crore. But with the detection of the Delhi case, the health ministry is drawing up fresh plans to prevent the spread of polio.
As part of the revamp, the government would focus on interrupting P1 transmission, while controlling P3. In 2008, five special rounds of immunisation will be conducted with special focus on Uttar Pradesh (UP), Bihar, Greater Mumbai, Delhi and other high-risk areas. Mop-ups would be carried out in response to any P1 or P3. The “core” districts of Western UP – Moradabad, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Aligarh and Bareilly – are under observation, though these areas have not reported P1 since November 2006.
The health ministry has marked 12 blocks in Bihar as high-risk. The mobile populations from UP and Bihar living in Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Delhi and Mumbai would be particularly covered during mop-ups. In fact, Tamil Nadu (TN) has already started screening migrants from Bihar to prevent polio spread. About 30,000 migrants have been already screened, Ramadoss said.
p_vineeta@dnaindia.net
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