Immunization of Children

Ministry of Health and Family Welfare

Immunization in India:

• The full immunization coverage stands at 92.8%, as per HMIS data from April 2019 to March 2020.
• However, still there are pockets where children remain deprived of completing the doses of vaccination, on account of various reasons, such as:
  • Lack of awareness of benefit of Immunization,
  • Apprehensions of Adverse Event Following Immunization (AEFI),
  • Child travelling,
  • Refusal for vaccination and
  • Operational gaps. 
• Further, to mitigate low immunization coverage, strategic interventions like advocacy, social mobilization, community engagement, inter personal communication at family level and media engagement are undertaken.

The targeted steps being taken by the Government in spreading awareness about the immunization in children across the country are:

• Awareness generation through electronic and print media like radio spots, television, poster, hoardings etc.
• Inter personal communication by front line health workers like Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM) and Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs)
• Utilizing social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and print media platforms.
• Social mobilization by Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) and other community workers. The workers are incentivized for same. 

Special vaccination missions

• Mission Indradhanush
•  Intensified Mission Indradhanush
• Gram SwarajAbhiyaan (GSA), Extended GSA have been carried out to reach the left out and drop out children from vaccination.

What is Intensified Mission Indradhanush?

The Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI) was launched in 2018 by the Central Government with the objective of covering all children under the age of two and pregnant women for immunization who were not covered under the UIP.

• This program was to intensify the Mission Indradhanush that had been launched in 2014.
  • The objective of Mission Indradhanush was to have a 90% coverage of the UIP in India by 2020 and sustain the same.
• IMI 2.0. was launched in December 2019 and continued up to March 2020, to further extend the reach and coverage of the mission, including tribal and hard-to-reach areas.
• Although the scheme comes under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), it is supported by many other ministries/departments such as:
  • Ministry of Information and Broadcasting 
  • Ministry of Panchayati Raj
  • Ministry of Women & Child Development
  • Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs
• The diseases covered under the mission are polio, diphtheria, measles, whooping cough, hepatitis B, tetanus, meningitis, rubella, Japanese encephalitis and pneumonia.

Source: PIB