Three-week-long measles campaign from Tuesday

February 06, 2017 04:59 pm | Updated 04:59 pm IST

One-third of the 1,14,900 children who die (as per records from the year 2014) due to measles every year are Indians, Deputy Commissioner N. Jayaram said today.

He told presspersons here on Monday that a programme from February 7 to 28 was being taken up to vaccinate nearly 13.30 lakh children below the age of 15 years as a preventive measure against Measles Rubella (MR) in the district. He appealed to all the parents to ensure that their children did not miss the vaccination.

The campaign was being taken up simultaneously taken up in other South Asian countries as well.

Mr. Jayaram said Rubella was a mild viral infection affecting both children as well as adults. It could cause severe life-long disabilities (Congenital Rubella Syndrome) to the child if infected during pregnancy, leading to huge socio-economic burden to the family and the society too.

The Central government was working to achieve the goal of eliminating measles and control Rubella and CRS by the year 2020 in conformation with the World Health Assembly resolution (2012). The Centre had selected Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Lakshadweep in the first phase.

Accordingly, the State government had planned a massive vaccination campaign covering 1.60 crore children in the age group of 9 months to 15 years. Vaccination would be administered in all schools, fixed and outreach sessions, and via mobile teams to cover high-risk areas. Around 4,865 vaccination centres have been opened to cover the 5,250 schools. Departments of Women and Child Development, and Health, panchayat bodies and several NGOs and social organisations have joined hands with the administration for the successful implementation of the campaign.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.