Intensified Mission Indradhanush 2.0 to be launched across the country today

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Centre will launch the Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI) 2.0 across the country today.

The government’s flagship scheme is aimed at immunizing children under the age of 2 years and pregnant women against eight vaccine preventable diseases. The IMI covers  vaccines for diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, poliomyelitis, tuberculosis, measles, meningitis and Hepatitis B. Vaccines for Japanese encephalitis and hemophilus influenzal are also being provided in selected areas. The IMI 2.0 aims to achieve targets of full immunization coverage in 272 districts spread over 27 States. The IMI 2.0 will be carried out between December 2019 and March 2020.

In October 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the IMI. The IMI was built on Mission Indradhanush, using additional strategies to reach populations at high risk, by involving sectors other than health. It was an effort to shift routine immunization into a peoples movement.

The Intensified Mission Indradhanush will roll out in 35 districts of Uttar Pradesh. Under the program the immunization activity will be in four rounds over seven working days excluding the Regular immunisation days, Sundays and holidays. First round starts today while next rounds will be in January, February and March months and will cover 425 blocks of 73 districts of stats. Health Minister of state Jai Pratap Singh said that under the program around 66 thousand sessions will be organized for vaccination of more than 5.5 lakh children and around 1.3 lakh pregnant women of state. Principal secretary health and welfare Devesh Chaturvedi said that prior to the launch of program a detail of all children under age of 2 who were left during earlier vaccination drives were collected will the help of asha workers last month. There will be an enhanced focus on left-outs, dropouts, and resistant families and hard to reach areas, focus on urban, underserved population and tribal areas.