Covid-19 vaccination affects the universal Immunization Programme
India is looking forward to the Covid-19 vaccination for every single man. It’s the target of delivering up to 500 million doses by July, which largely affects the existing routine immunisation program, may collateral damage to the system. Public health professional warns against it.
India’s Universal Immunization Programme (UIP) is one of the largest public health programmes, which targets 56 million people annually (26.7 million new-born babies/ infants and 29 million pregnant women). It needs about 390 million for 12 diseases, nationally against 9 diseases and sub-nationally against 3 diseases. These 12 diseases are Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Polio, Measles, Rubella, severe form of Childhood Tuberculosis, Hepatitis B, Meningitis & Pneumonia, Rotavirus diarrhoea, Pneumococcal Pneumonia and Japanese Encephalitis.
India’s Universal Immunization Programme is the world’s largest immunization programme.
The Indian government has also started the world’s largest Covid-19 immunisation programme this year. Covid-19 vaccination and Immunization programme is being implemented in parallel, using much of the same human resources and physical infrastructure. During the Covid-19 era, India’s health infrastructure has been improved but the doctor’s ratio is still a major problem.
The country dedicated to increasing routine immunisation nationally to 90% under Intensified Mission Indradhanush Initiative.
Mission Indradhanush
Mission Indradhanush is a flagship program of the National Democratic Alliance government to speed up Immunisation coverage of children and pregnant women at a rapid pace. It was launched in December 2014. It’s two-phased had been already launched. While launching IMI 3.0, Harsh Vardhan, Minister of Health and Family Welfare, announced it hopes to increase routine immunisation nationally to 90 % under the IMI initiative. India has been unsuccessful in reaching the target of 90 % coverage for routine immunisations for the last four years.
In the current scenario, India is additionally engaged in a massive COVID-19 vaccination programme.
If we go through the data, that has been taken from India spend, I thankful for this great and detail story, it shows our immunisation programme has not achieved full-fledge immunisation, still too many children have not been vaccinated, this figure may be in millions. The first survey’s data were from 1992–93 and the most updated data are from National Family Health Survey — 5 (NFHS) indicates our immunisation has a very slow pace and it’s a decade long progress.
These data show that India’s national immunisation level (the percentage of children aged between 12 to 23 months) has not improved well. In NHFS — 1 (1992–93) has 36% improved to 42 % in NFHS — 2 (1998–99) to 43.5 % in NHFS — 3 (2005–06) and 62 % in (2015–16); all India coverage as per NFHS — 5 has not been calculated and released. If we go through States and union territories data which were released saw over 70 % vaccination.
As per the PIB press release, it stated Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has decided to conduct integrated NFHS with a periodicity of three years instead of different surveys from 2015–16 onwards to meet the evolving requirements for frequent, timely and appropriate data at the National, State and District levels.
It took more than six decades to decide the time frame of conducting health-related surveys in India.
