Union Minister
for Parliamentary Affairs and Health & Family Welfare, Smt.
Sushma Swaraj has said that in view of the resurgence of polio
cases in some parts of the country, the programme would be intensified
in the next two years through effective community participation,
sensitization, monitoring and surveillance techniques and people
friendly communication strategy. Smt. Swaraj stated this while
launching the second National Pulse Polio Immunization round,
here today. Elaborating further, Smt. Swaraj said that this
national round was the largest ever social mobilization of families
through community and health workers across the country. An
estimated 25 lakh workers and volunteers would conduct this
programme at about 5 lakh booths today.
The objective of
the second round was to ensure that no child was left behind
without being administered polio drops. It was very important
that to ensure complete eradication of the virus, all children
in the country were covered in the round conducted today. Explaining
the strategy, Smt. Swaraj said that after the immunization drive
at the booths, it will be followed up by house visits in the
next five days by specially constituted teams. To ensure that
children who missed administration of vaccine today were administered
the drops at their doorstep.
Smt. Swaraj said
that the country wide coverage in the administration of polio
drops had seen an increase of over 10 lakh children during the
last national round held in January this year as compared to
the national round last year. An estimated 16.4 crore children
were administered polio drops in January this year. Smt. Swaraj
said that in he current phase, community workers and parents
had to play a proactive role in facilitating the effectiveness
of the programme. It had been seen that the resurgence of cases
had been due to lack of consciousness and responsibility of
parents in administering polio drops to the children at the
right time. The Minister called upon the parents to take a pledge
to remove this handicap effecting children as early as possible.
It was a national responsibility to help the Government to solve
the problem at the earliest.
