15.34 lakh children administered polio drops in Haryana

By Haryananewswire

CHANDIGARH, Nov 24

 About 15.34 lakh children below five years of age  have been administered polio drops in 13 districts of Haryana on the first day of  Sub-National Immunization round of Pulse Polio 2013-14 today.The children covered on first day of the 3-day campaign are 59 per cent of the total 26 lakh targeted children.

While stating this here today, a spokesman of Health Department said that the districts covered included Ambala, Faridabad, Gurgaon, Jhajjar, Karnal, Kurukshetra, Mewat, Palwal, Panchkula, Panipat, Rohtak, Sonipat  and  Yamuna Nagar. He said that today polio drops were administered at specially set up booths. He said that the campaign was inaugurated by Mrs Geeta Bhukkal, Education Minister, Haryana, in district Jhajjar  and by Ms. Sumita Singh, MLA, Karnal in district Karnal.

     He said that this campaign would continue for another two days by way of house-to-house activity to administer polio drops to the left out children on booth day.

He said that in order to smoothly carry out this campaign, a total of 10573 booths were setup in the state and these were manned by about 42,000 health officials, volunteers,Anganwadi Workers and ASHA workers. About 2100 officials supervised the activity apart from Independent Monitors of PGIMS, Rohtak and NPSP-WHO. This activity was preceded by undertaking awareness campaign through  media, drum beating and other educational activities.

The left out children during the booth activity on first day will be administered polio vaccine drops on November 25  and  26   through teams which would go from house-to-house to administer polio drops to targeted children.

During this round, special attention has been paid to high risk areas like slums, isolated hutments, brick kilns, migrating population  and construction sites, so that no child is left uncovered in these areas. About 1000 mobile teams are also working during the activity to cover all children in poorly approachable areas. He said that  wherever, pockets of children remain unimmunized, Polio virus sustains survival  and circulation. With every successive round of Pulse Polio Immunization, the areas of Poliovirus circulation get reduced.