Srinagar, July 08: The first round of immunization under the Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI) 5.0 will commence in Jammu and Kashmir in three rounds starting from August 07, 2023, officials said.
The first round of immunization will commence on August 07 and will continue till August 12, followed by the second round from September 11 to 16. The third round will start from October 09 to 14 to cover the children up to 2 years of age and expecting mothers, for immunization.
Director Family Welfare, MCH and Immunization, J&K Dr Tabasum Jabeen said the Mission Indradhanush 5.0 is a vaccination program which is aimed to cover the left out children. “Many children remain unvaccinated as has been seen during the Covid-19 period. There are children who aren’t vaccinated or who are 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 digitalize it and it will be named U-Win (win over vaccination). This platform will be used to register and vaccinate every pregnant woman and register her delivery outcome and required immunizations. And they will get messages of their vaccinations,” the director said. “We will be focussing on high-risk areas like slums, construction, sites, and boat colonies and we want to cover all of them so that we are able to achieve the target of MR elimination by 2030.”
The officials will also focus on areas with vaccine hesitancy/refusal for vaccination and areas with high left-out and drop-out children with a special focus on MR-1 and MR-2.
The health department will focus on areas with low coverage of new vaccines that have been introduced with the Universal Immunization Program (UIP) and areas with a large number of vaccination sessions not held as planned.
The district-level officers like Chief Medical Officers and District immunization Officers have been trained in this regard and they have trained the block-level officers and then they will train the ANMs and ASHAs. “The ASHA and ANMs will identify children and do head count surveys in villages and that will be verified by the concerned supervisor,” he said.
To strengthen routine immunization planning and delivery mechanism, the MoHFW, GoI, launched its flagship program “Mission Indradhanush” in December 2014 to achieve more than 90 percent full immunization coverage in the country.
