Gurugram: Health dept administers more polio drops than targeted population

The district health department has exceeded its target for the pulse polio vaccination, through booth activity and door-to-door, during the three-day campaign across the city, officials said on Tuesday

The district health department has exceeded its target for the pulse polio vaccination, through booth activity and door-to-door, during the three-day campaign across the city, officials said on Tuesday.

A health worker administers a dose of polio vaccine to a child at a polyclinic in Gurugram’s Sector 31 on Sunday. (Parveen Kumar/HT photo)

The department, which had set a target of administering polio drops to 359,648 children upto the age of five, has covered 367,529 such beneficiaries in the district, said the officials.

The health department officials have been able to “immunise more people this time as additional polio booths were set up in private hospitals, along with the ones at government centres, and door-to-door immunisation drive was also held”.

“Administering polio doses at booths, which usually sees around 47% to 48% of the target population, crossed over 50% this time. It is likely that this happened because polio booths were also set up at private hospitals, along with the one at government hospitals. The district administration had also shared the list of polio booths in the district on social media, almost a week in advance... due to which more people got to know about the drive and got their children vaccinated with the polio dose. It is seen that people, many times, do not wish to visit government health centres or booths, they rather opt for private centres... This time, 55% of the target was achieved on the first day, through booth level activity itself,” said Dr MP Singh, district immunisation officer.

The health department had also asked healthcare and Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers deployed for door-to-door pulse polio immunisation programme to identify children in the 15-17 age group, who did not get the Covid-19 jab.They were also asked to collect data of children in the 12-14 age group, who would be eligible for the Covid-19 vaccination in the future. The data will be compiled over the next two days to plan further strategy for the vaccination drive in the district, said the officials.

Gurugram on Tuesday reported 151 fresh Covid-19 cases, one death and 188 recoveries, taking the tally of active cases to 837, according to the district health bulletin. At present, the positivity rate in the district is 3.58%.

On Tuesday, 333 children were administered the Covid-19 vaccine in the district, of which, 40 received their first dose and 293 second dose. Total 1,304 doses -- 198 first doses, 964 second doses and 142 precautionary doses -- of Covid-19 vaccines were administered to the beneficiaries on Tuesday. With this, over 4.95 million doses have been administered to the people of Gurugram till date, said the officials.