According to the latest reports, the Telangana pulse polio drive will take place tomorrow from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The initiative aims to provide polio oral drops to over 35 lakh children aged from one to five years.
Apart from Aanganwadi centres, government schools, public libraries, bus terminals, railway stations, tourism centres, and airports, the drive will be held at all government healthcare facilities. In collaboration with Panchayat Raj officials, health officials have set up over 25,000 polio booths throughout Telangana.
The intensified pulse polio drive will be implemented by almost 800 mobile teams, nearly 8000 Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM) workers, and over 25,000 Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA).
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To serve children who missed out on the first day of the drive, a two-day mop-up exercise will be performed on Monday and Tuesday, with field-level staff individually visiting slum settlements, construction sites, and other locations to vaccinate children from the transient demography.
T Harish Rao, the Health Minister, encouraged parents on Friday to ensure that their children receive polio drops and that the vaccination drive is a success. He asked public officials to personally engage in the pulse polio vaccination drive, which will go a long way toward encouraging parents to bring their children to the vaccine booths.
Why is the oral polio vaccine (OPV) important?
OPV is the WHO-recommended vaccination for global polio eradication. To be immunised against polio, each child just needs two drops per dose. OPV, which is typically delivered four times if the EPI plan is followed, is both safe and effective in protecting against the paralyzing poliovirus. More than two billion children have received OPV as part of the eradication initiative and as part of normal immunization services in over 200 countries.
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