E-Paper
?Lage Raho? parents till polio peters out
WITH POLIOVIRUS crippling altogether 312 children all over the state the Medical Health and Family Welfare Department has planned to modify its communication strategy.
WITH POLIOVIRUS crippling altogether 312 children all over the state the Medical Health and Family Welfare Department has planned to modify its communication strategy.
Till now it has been urging the parents to immunise their children with ‘doo boond zindagi ki’. Now it will motivate them to give repeated ‘khurak’ (doses) of the polio vaccine to their kids.
Taking a cue from ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’ the Health Department will urge the people to get their children immunized regularly till the poliovirus was eradicated.
Though a decade has passed since the launch of the polio immunization drive, still around 8 per cent children are missed in each immunization round. The Health Department feels that there is a need to amend the communication strategy.
Principal Secretary, Medical Health and Family Welfare AK Mishra said people should be made aware of the fact that the polio vaccine was not one-time drop. Parents should be told that they would have to administer vaccine to the children in each immunization drive, he said. “Now the communication with the people would be more UP specific. In majority of the homes adolescent girls take care of the children and we would motivate the girls to take the children to booths for administration of vaccine”, Mishra said.
“Cricket player Mohammad Kaif and tennis sensation Sania Mirza would appeal to the people to administer polio drop to their children. The chief minister and ministers would also appeal to the common masses”, he said adding that people should get rid of the mindset that immunization drive was a mere government programme.
He further said that with maximum number of polio cases being reported in Uttar Pradesh the focus of all the organisations including WHO, UNICEF and Rotary International working to eradicate polio would be on UP.
September 10 immunisation drive was important since maximum number of children were immunized.
The coming six months would be crucial since the focus would be on urban local bodies and Vidhan Sabha elections. If we maintain the drive with the same spirit polio would be eradicated from UP, he said.
