79% of estimated beneficiaries below 5-years were fully immunised in 2021-22

PUNE The routine immunisation programme in Pune city has taken a hard hit due to the Covid-19 pandemic to the extent that between April 2021 and January 2022, only 79% of children were immunised

PUNE The routine immunisation programme in Pune city has taken a hard hit due to the Covid-19 pandemic to the extent that between April 2021 and January 2022, only 79% of children were immunised. Whereas in the year 2020-21, close to 97% children were fully immunised. To ensure that no child is left unimmunised, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has now launched a special drive and outreach programmes for routine immunisation, including BCG and Pentavalent vaccination.

The routine immunisation programme in Pune city has taken a hard hit due to the Covid-19 pandemic. (FILE PHOTO)

Dr Suryakant Deokar, PMC immunisation chief officer, said, “Most of the civic health staff was engaged in Covid-19 contract tracing, reporting and also vaccination programmes. Also during the second wave which was far more deadly than the first wave, we were more involved in Covid-19 management. Also due to the multiple lockdowns and restrictions on movement for the common public, the response to routine immunisation was affected. However, to ensure that all the children were given routine vaccines, we did arrange for special drives in the months of February and March and multiple outreach programmes to cover every child. In February alone, we vaccinated over 1,200 children under ‘Mission Indradhanushya’ and in March too, we will be able to vaccinate more kids.”

As per the PMC health department, only 83% of the children were given the BCG vaccine as out of the 60,900 estimated beneficiaries, 50,754 got the BCG vaccine while 48,269 children got the pentavalent vaccine for the same period which is about 79% of the estimated beneficiaries.