A special mission will be conducted in the State from Monday, as part of the national immunisation programme, to make up for the shortfall in the State’s routine immunisation coverage for various vaccine-preventable diseases over the past two years.
The special drive is being conducted to administer vaccines for various vaccine-preventable diseases to children and pregnant women, who may have fully or partially missed the vaccines in the routine immunisation schedule because of the pandemic situation .
The special vaccination drive is being conducted in Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Alappuzha, Ernakulam, Thrissur, Palakkad, Malappuram, Kozhikode and Kannur, where there were serious shortfall in routine immunisation coverage in the past two years of COVID-19.
According to the Health department’s estimation, 19,916 children and 2,177 pregnant women have found a place in the list of partially immunised people and will be targetted in the current drive.
The special immunisation drive will be conducted over March, April and May in three rounds, each of seven days’ duration. A total of 1,649 sessions have been planned over nine districts to make up for the shortfall in immunisation coverage.
The vaccines to be administered are those included in the Universal Immunisation Programme, namely BCG, OPV, IPV, Pentavalent vaccine, Rotavirus vaccine, MR, DPT and TD.
The Health department has prepared a line list of those children and pregnant women who need to be vaccinated in all nine districts and have ensured all supplies. Training programmes have also been completed for the smooth conduct of the vaccination drive.
