Guwahati: Three districts of Meghalaya — East Khasi Hills, West Khasi Hills and West Garo Hills – have been categorized as ‘focus districts’ under the Central Government’s ambitious ‘Mission Indradhanush’.
‘Mission Indradhanush’, which was launched on December 25, 2014, aims to immunize all children against seven vaccine preventable diseases namely diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, tuberculosis, measles and hepatitis B by 2020.
Informing this during a regional media sensitization workshop for ‘Mission Indradhanush’ in Guwahati on Wednesday, the Director of Regional Resource Centre for North East, Dr AC Baishya said that altogether 201 districts in the country have been identified as high focus areas.
While asserting that infant mortality rate is low in the region, he, however, rued that the coverage of immunization was not growing in the region “which is a matter of concern”.
According to Dr Baishya, the objective of the mission is to cover the uncovered area and get all children under the age of 2 years and pregnant mothers immunized.
While presenting an overview of the Mission, Dr A Deka from World Health Organisation stressed that the speed, policy and approach of the North East region has to be changed for immuniziation of children in uncovered areas even as he said that the next year the mission would concentrate on medium focus areas of the country.
Under the mission, the Union Government aims to increase the coverage of immuniziation from the present 65 per cent to 90 percent.
Under the scheme, the Anganwadi and Asha workers will conduct a survey in the targeted areas and identify the beneficiaries for the immunization, adding the mission will be monitored by independent agencies of World Health Organization and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) besides the Chief Secretaries of the respective states.
In the year between 2009-2013 immunization coverage has increased from 61% to 65%, indicating only 1% increase in coverage every year.
To accelerate the process of immunization by covering 5% and more children every year, the Mission Mode has been adopted to achieve target of full coverage by 2020.
