Nagpur: The National Pulse Polio Vaccination Campaign is coming to Nagpur on March 3. The Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has urged all parents to ensure their children under 5 years of age receive a dose of the polio vaccine on that day.
Vaccinations will be available at designated booths from 8 am to 5 pm. Besides, mobile teams will be deployed at places like temples, mosques, malls, railway stations, and high-risk areas, to ensure no child is missed. NMC has taken several steps to ensure comprehensive vaccination coverage.
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The Pulse Polio Immunisation Programme was rolled out in India on October 2, 1994, when India accounted for around 60% of the global polio cases. The last case of polio due to the wild polio virus was reported in Kerala from Malappuram in 2000. No cases due to the wild virus have been reported in India since 2011.
India received a ‘Polio-free certification’ from the World Health Organisation, along with the entire South-East Asia Region on the March 27, 2014.
According to the WHO, wild polio virus cases continue to be reported in neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan and as long as a single child remains infected, children in all countries are at risk of contracting polio. Failure to eradicate polio from these last remaining strongholds could result in as many as 200 000 new cases every year, within 10 years, all over the world, WHO says.
Hence, one national polio immunisation day and two sub-national immunisation days are held in the country every year to maintain population immunity against the wild virus and thus maintain India’s polio-free status. At the same time, injectable inactivated polio vaccine has been made part of the national immunisation schedule for providing routine immunisation cover to all children.
