The Hindu : Front Page : Migrant children to get extra dose of polio vaccine

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 11, 2007
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Migrant children to get extra dose of polio vaccine

Ramya Kannan

Bangalore case causes apprehension
Mapping of migrants in State begun

CHENNAI: The recent reporting of a polio case from Bangalore, with a two-year-old child of a migrant worker being affected, has revived Tamil Nadu’s apprehensions about migrant populations bringing back the polio virus into the State.

Determined to prevent this entry route for the polio virus, the State’s public health department has decided to target migrant workers for special attention and for an extra dose of oral polio vaccine for their children. The first round will be started immediately for the migrant populations of Kelamangalam village in Krishnagiri, one of the two districts bordering Karnataka.

As a precaution, the extra dose will also be administered in Bagalur, Thalli and Hosur in Krishnagiri and Hogenekkal (Dharmapuri).

With 80 per cent of the 676 polio cases reported in 2006 coming out of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, health department officials felt their apprehensions were justified, considering the large number of migrant workers from these two States.

Most of them come to Tamil Nadu to work in the construction industry, primarily in the large Information Technology parks coming up all over the state. Since the workers have to stay in the same place for at least two years, they bring their family along and the children are likely to spread the virus, transmitted largely through the faeco-oral route.

The State Government has started mapping the migrant populations in Tamil Nadu. Beginning in 2008, children of these groups will be given an extra dose of the vaccine after the two regular rounds in January and February. With monthly updates being planned to keep an accurate inflow and outflow of such groups of workers, officials hope they will be able to keep track of the children and include fresh migrants in the vaccination programme.

According to public health department sources, the child in Bangalore was a member of a migrant labourer from Faizabad, close to Agra, in Uttar Pradesh. The family had migrated to Karnataka in search of labour and were employed in a construction site. Health department officials explain this anomaly saying, the vaccine being used in Uttar Pradesh was the monovalent vaccine, guaranteeing protection against only one of the three strains.

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