More than 10 lakh children in the State could not be covered in the Pulse Polio drive that took place on Sunday.
According to a senior official from the Department of Health and Family Welfare, 85.49 per cent of the targeted children in the State were administered oral polio drops at the end of day one.
“We have administered polio drops to 64.47 lakh children across the State. The remaining 10 lakh will be covered during the house-to-house visits over the next three days,” said the senior official.
Districts such as Mysore, Kodagu, Udupi achieved more than 90 per cent coverage on day one, while North Karnataka districts, including Bidar, Bijapur, Gulbarga and Yadgir, achieved less than 75 per cent coverage.
The Health Department will now undertake door-to-door campaign to ensure that all children are given polio drops. In North Karnataka districts and all rural areas, the door-to-door campaign will take place for three days and in urban areas, these visits will be limited to two days. After that, the next round is scheduled to be conducted on February 24.
Meanwhile, the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), which launched the campaign in 135 of its 198 wards, achieved 85.65 per cent coverage with 5,57,232 children being polio drops.
“We still have to cover 93,360 children in BBMP areas,” it said.
A new feature introduced by the civic body this year is immunisation during night where health workers and BBMP officials would administer polio drops to those children who missed out during the day.
Speaking to The Hindu , Devaki Umesh, Chief Health Officer, BBMP said, “More than 1.1 lakh children were administered polio drops at bus stands, railway stations and market places.”
Hurdles
When The Hindu visited some polio booths in the city, some of the nursing students manning the booths said that they were not trained for the drive.
One of them at the Garden English High School in T. Dasarahalli said that language posed a barrier in convincing people to get their children to the camp.
Another from a college at Papareddypalya, who was volunteering at an anganwadi near Peenya, said, “We find it difficult to convince people to bring their children to the camp. Since morning we could administer the drops to only 56 children, though this slum has more than 200 children.”
