Srinagar, Sept 11: The second round of immunization under the Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI) 5.0 started in J&K on Monday with officials saying in this round they will be focussed on slums and hard-of-reach areas to ensure 100 percent coverage.
The IMI5.0 campaign aims to target children under the age of 5 years and pregnant women who had missed their scheduled vaccine doses, or were due for one.
Dr Tabasum Jabeen, Director Family Welfare, MCH and Immunization, J&K said Mission Indradhanush 5.0 is a vaccination program that is aimed to cover the left out children.
She said the second round of immunization was started all across the Union Territory. It began from a hard-to-reach area in the interiors of Dal Lake.
“The second round will be held from Sep 11 to 16 and this time we will be focussed on slums, construction sites, boat colonies and hard-to-reach areas which are difficult to access,” she said. The department aims to cover all of them so that they are able to achieve the target of MR elimination by 2030.
In the first round of immunization which commenced from Aug 07 and to Aug 12, J&K had a target of 33,678 children in the 0-5 age group and the UT had achieved 100 percent coverage.
“Many children remain unvaccinated as has been seen during the Covid-19 period. There are children who aren’t vaccinated or partially vaccinated. Under this program, all children and pregnant women will be covered and we will make sure they are vaccinated,” she said.
Dr Tabasum said the Indradhanush 5.0 is also aimed to eliminate Measles and Rubella. “When we cover all the children only then we will be able to achieve that target,” she said.
“Under the intensified Mission Indradhanush 5.0, the Government of India is going to digitize it and it will be named U-Win (win over-vaccination). This platform will be used to register and vaccinate every pregnant woman, register her delivery outcome and required immunizations. And they will get messages of their vaccinations,” she said.
The health department will also focus on areas with low coverage of new vaccines that have been introduced with the Universal Immunization Program (UIP) and areas with large number of vaccination sessions not held as against planned.
The district-level officers like CMOs, District Immunization Officers have been trained in this regard and they have trained Block level officers and ANMs and ASHAs.
After the second round, the third round will start from Oct 09 to Oct 14 to cover children aged 0 to 2 years and expecting mothers for immunization.
To strengthen routine immunization planning and delivery mechanisms, the MoHFW, GoI, launched its flagship program “Mission Indradhanush” in December 2014 to achieve more than 90% full immunization coverage in the country.
The initiative is part of a nationwide endeavour to eliminate the Measles-Rubella disease by December 2023. One of the features of IMI 5.0 is digitization of routine immunization activities as part of Digital India Mission, utilizing the U-WIN platform, enabling tracking of immunization schedules and downloading e-certificates.
