The Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine has begun preparations to achieve 100 per cent coverage of the annual Pulse Polio Programme, which will cover children below the age of five. The programme will be held in the third week of January.
Collection of the number of births from the Coimbatore Corporation, primary health centres and the Government hospitals will begin in January. Coordination meetings with various departments would also be held soon, S. Somasundaram, Deputy Director of Health Services (Coimbatore), told The Hindu on Tuesday.
A training programme on methods for proper storage and administration of vaccine, besides other logistical issues will be held for staff nurses, medicals officers and other personnel during the first week of January.
Efforts would also be taken to ascertain the migration pattern in Coimbatore district. The Health Department personnel would soon begin identifying the brick kilns, construction sites and road works, where migrant labourers were most likely to be engaged in work. This was to know the number of children requiring administration of polio drops, the Deputy Director said.
Teams would be formed in all the 13 blocks of Coimbatore district under the respective Block Medical Officers to scrutinise the vaccination process.
Dr. Somasundaram said that a pulse polio campaign was conducted for migrant workers last week in which around 1,800 children were covered. A total of 3.50 lakh children were administered polio drops in Coimbatore district in the last campaign taken up between January 20 and 22 this year.
The last reported case of polio in Coimbatore district was in Paiyakaroor village on August 28, 1999. The last reported victim of polio in Tamil Nadu was a three-year-old child in a Narikurava Colony of Pettai Tenkasi, Tirunelveli district, on February 18, 2004.
