- Although almost all children in India are vaccinated against tuberculosis, and receive their birth dose of polio vaccine,
- Two out of five children do not complete their immunisation programme, according to the ‘Health in India’ report recently published by the National Statistical Organisation (NSO).
- Most of these children remain unprotected against measles, and partially protected against a range of other diseases.
- In the national capital, less than half of all children have been given all eight required vaccines.
- The report is based on the 75th round of the National Sample Survey (July 2017-June 2018) on household social consumption related to health.
- Across the country, only 59.2% of children under five years are fully immunised, according to the NSO report.
- This contradicts the Centre’s Health Management Information System portal data, which claimed that full immunisation coverage for 2017-18 stood at 86.7%.
- Full immunisation means that a child receives a cocktail of eight vaccine doses in the first year of life:
- the BCG vaccine injected in a single dose shortly after birth, which protects against a childhood attack of tuberculosis;
- the measles vaccine;
- the oral polio vaccine (OPV) whose first dose is given at birth, followed by two more doses at intervals of four weeks; and
- the DPT/pentavalent vaccine, generally injected in three doses, which is meant to protect a child from diphtheria, pertussis or whooping cough,
- Tetanus, Hepatitis B, and meningitis and pneumonia caused by hemophilus influenza type B.
- Booster doses for OPV and DPT are also given between 16 and 24 months.
- Among States, Manipur (75%), Andhra Pradesh (73.6%) and Mizoram (73.4%) recorded the highest rates of full immunisation.
- At the other end of the spectrum lies Nagaland, where only 12% of children received all vaccinations, followed by Puducherry (34%) and Tripura (39.6%).
