63 per cent children covered under pulse polio in Haryana

http://news.webindia123.com/news/Articles/India/20080427/941516.html
About 63 per cent children between the age of 0 to five years have been covered today during the Sub-National Intensified Pulse Polio Immunisation round of 2008-09 in the 12 districts of Haryana including Ambala, Faridabad, Gurgaon, Jhajjar, Karnal, Kurukshetra, Mewat, Panchkula, Panipat, Rohtak, Sonepat and Yamunanagar. About 26 lakh children are to be covered during this campaign in these districts, Haryana Health Minister Mrs Kartar Devi said today that this campaign would continue for another two days by way of house-to-house activity in these 12 districts to trace out and administer polio vaccine to those children who were not brought to the booths set up to administer polio vaccine. In all, 9900 booths were setup in the State and these were manned by about 39,600 health officials, volunteers, Anganwari Workers, Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs). She said that about 2000 officials supervised the campaign. They were in addition to the Nodal Officers from the State headquarters and Independent Monitors of PGIMS Rohtak.
The Minister said that this activity was preceded by undertaking awareness campaign through print media, radio, TV and other intensive education activities. She said that the left out children would be administered polio vaccine drops on April 28 and 29 through house-to-house teams. During this round, special attention is being paid to slums, far-flung areas, isolated hutments, brick kilns and floating or migratory population. Wherever, pockets of children remain un-immunized, the polio virus sustains survives and gets circulated.
With every successive round of Pulse Polio Immunisation, the areas of Poliovirus circulation get reduced, she added.
-- (UNI) --

Awareness about polio

This is the responsibility of every person to eradicate polio from India. So we appeal personally to every Indian to please help us to eradicate the Polio & give full cooperation in IPPI Round from June 1st, 2008 onwards - District Administration

Pulse Polio

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pulse Polio is an immunization campaign established by the government of India in 1994 to eradicate poliomyelitis (polio) in India by vaccinating annually all children under age five against poliovirus.

Every child receives a dose of Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV), a live, attenuated virus which colonises the gastrointestinal tract. This virus competitively inhibits the wild, disease-causing poliovirus. Not only does this prevent pernicious infection in the host, it precludes transmission of the wild poliovirus to other hosts. Since poliovirus cannot survive outside a host for more than two weeks, theoretically it would be eradicated, resulting in the eradication of poliomyelitis.

The campaign proved to be successful, and the incidence of poliomyelitis in India has decreased dramatically: India recorded 4,791 cases of polio in 1994; 2,489 in 1997; 1,600 in 2002; 225 in 2003; and 135 in 2004. Nevertheless, critics charge that the campaign has seriously encroached on other essential public health services at times when health care resources were minimal.