Only 53 per cent immunisation achieved in April, catch-up rounds planned in state
Ranchi, June 15: Covid pandemic and lockdown restrictions has made Jharkhand lag behind in its routine immunisation for children in the month of April.
Sources in the health department Jharkhand informed that the trend continued even in the month of May.
This has made the state health department issue letters to the civil surgeons in all 24 districts of the state to start ‘catch-up’ rounds of immunisation for dropouts (those infants who have taken one dose but discontinued) and left out (those who have not taken a single dose of vaccine).
“Routine immunisation programmes have been running well in the state for years, but we could achieve only 53 per cent of our target in April as the focus shifted to Covid vaccination and mothers preferred stopped visiting health centers and anganbari centres out of hesitancy to avoid getting infected and due to lockdown restriction,” said Dr Siddharth Tripathi, the nodal officer of health department’s Information, Education and Communication (IEC) wing.
Officials at the district level have been asked to identify “left out” and “drop out” children and vaccinate them.
Routine immunisation plays an important role in preventing cases of measles, influenza, Japanese Encephalitis, polio, tuberculosis, diphtheria, hepatitis and rotavirus. As per data with the health department, around 8.5 lakh babies are born every year in Jharkhand and their immunisation process begins at the age of 1.5 months.
Catch-up rounds for immunising children who missed out will be run at the panchayat and block levels by Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs), health officials said. However, they clarified that routine immunisation will be held along with vaccination campaigns against Covid-19 across the state.
The government also launched a vaccination campaign against pneumonia this month in Jharkhand. Around 77,000 infants are scheduled to get doses of Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) by the end of June.
According to data of the state health department the vaccine wastage in Jharkhand dropped to 1.7 per cent on Tuesday. Out of a total of 58,17,250 vaccine doses were made available to the state by the Centre so far, and around 1,00,844 doses have been wasted since the launch of the immunisation programme against Covid-19 on January 16.
The state on Monday administered the first dose of vaccine against Covid-19 to 64,523 residents and almost 45,000 of the beneficiaries were in the age bracket of 18 years to 44 years. The second jab was administered to 16,586 residents, stated a separate NHM report.
Meanwhile, all the 24 districts deputy commissioners have furnished status reports of the 48 pressure swing adsorption (PSA) plants at sadar hospitals in the districts.
According to state health department sources, each of the PSA plants will have capacities to generate oxygen and cater to hospitals with 200-500 beds and would be employing technology provided by DRDO and CSIR absorbing nitrogen from ambient air to concentrate oxygen.
The oxygen generated will be supplied directly to patients admitted in the hospitals. Order will be placed by the end of this month for vendors for setting up the plant.
