Intensified Mission Indradhanush
On 8th October 2017, another Mission Indradhanush vaccination programme was launched by Honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi this time it was ‘Intensified Mission Indradhanush’ with a more robust plan to reach out to the maximum population.
1. Once again the Government’s aim was to cover all Left outs and Dropouts under the routine immunisation programme/UIP.
2. The main focus was on the low routine immunisation coverage area in the selected 173 districts and 17 cities. It included places like
– Slums, unauthorized colonies
– Places without Auxiliary Nursing Midwives (ANM)
– Subcenters where it was difficult for workers to cover the entire population
– Those who Consecutively missed routine immunisation
3. In fact, any child who missed out on immunisation dosage earlier and was under 5 years of age could take these Vaccines. This programme covered all 12 vaccines that have been mentioned above.
4. Normally any routine immunisation programme is kept only for two days Tuesday and Friday in any government health centres. But in the case of Intensified Mission Immunisation (IMI), it was executed on all 7 days in a month, for the consecutive 4 months. And these 7 days would mostly start from the 7th of every month.
The purpose of keeping 7 days in a month from the 7th date was to continue its association with the colours of Rainbow.
5. The focus of this drive was to improve immunisation coverage in select districts and cities to ensure at least more than 90% immunisation by December 2018 instead of 2020.
Basically, it was started to clear up all the lags in the Mission Indradhanush.
Mission Indradhanush Immunisation Programme
With the aim of expanding immunization coverage to all children across India by the year 2020, on 25th December 2014, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare launched Mission Indradhanush. It was formed to expand the ongoing Immunization Programme which started in the year 1978 as the ‘Expanded Programme of Immunization (EPI)’.
Although the Immunization program(EPI) was modified in 1985 under the ‘Universal Immunization Programme’ (UIP). However, the sluggish progress between the 2009 and 2013 time period triggered the need for another program targeted to achieve at least 90% coverage of India by 2020. And since then, five improved versions of the programmes have been launched. Let us look at the efficacy rate of each one of them: