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New immunisation practices mooted

MADURAI: A new set of procedures to administer vaccines to children will be tried in the State, following the death of four infants in Tiruvallur district after measles vaccination.

The Directorate of Public Health (DPH) is contemplating a model wherein children in a particular district would be brought to the Primary Health Centre (PHC) in their block for vaccination instead of carrying the vaccine to village health centres.

“We were told at meeting held in Chennai on Thursday that an alternative immunisation model will be tried by the Directorate. Opinion has been sought from health officials,” a senior official told The Hindu here on Friday.

Confirming this, a top DPH official said that the details of the alternative model would be announced in a week after which it would be tested for feasibility.

There were also plans to provide transport for children, along with their mothers, to the PHC, the official said. However, district level officials here were not sure if the new model would be successful, as routine immunisation involved a huge number of children. Bringing all of them to PHCs might be a difficult task, they felt.

The DPH has also issued guidelines to all district-level health officials on procedures for measles immunisation.

District health officials had been alerting the Directorate at meetings that “in several rural villages non-medical people or unauthorised persons were handling the vaccine in Primary Health Centres and complaints were made earlier too.” “There are instances of some village health nurses deputing ‘ayahs’ or outsiders to get the vaccine from the PHCs, which was then carried to villages for administering to children. We have brought this to the attention of the government,” an official said.

Latest instructions from the Directorate were that only village health nurses should collect the vaccine from the storage point.

In places where the vaccine was administered, the medical officer concerned, the sector health nurse and the PHC pharmacist should check the vial’s batch number and expiry date.

The guidelines also made it mandatory for Deputy Directors of Health Services, along with Assistant Directors and District Maternity and Child Health Officers, to inspect the vaccine distribution process on all Wednesdays when immunisation takes place in PHCs.

The Directorate had also made immunisation training to all field level staff mandatory, a health official said.

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