Effective maintenance of vaccine cold chains, increasing number of booths and better coordination between various agencies and bordering countries like Nepal and Bangladesh are among the steps being taken for the next round of Pulse Polio Immunisation (PPI) programme starting from September 24, Health Minister C P Thakur said on Friday. The next four rounds would cover Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, which have been identified as high burden zones, Thakur told a video-press conference in New Delhi in which reporters from Calcutta, Patna and Lucknow also participated.
That would be followed by three rounds starting November 5 covering Assam, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat, and nation-wide rounds in December and January next covering other states to achieve complete eradication of Polio by 2002 end, Thakur said. “Pointing out that there has been a 40 per cent fall in the number of Polio cases in the country this year compared to last year as against a 12 per cent decrease in 1999 compared to 1998, he said that the next round would cover 14 crore children aged below five in the four states. Total number of polio cases in the country has dropped to 1126 last year to 121 this year till now. “The four high-burden states have higher incidence not because children there are more prone to Polio, but because the government has failed to reach people in interior areas there,” he clarified. Bureau Report