2nd phase of Mission Indradhanush launched; focus on 352 districts

New Delhi: Buoyed by the success of the first phase of 'Mission Indradhanush', the government on Monday launched second phase of the ambitious immunisation programme focusing on 352 districts and assured the states of full support for achieving the targets.

Launching the second phase of 'Mission Indradhanush', Union Health Minister JP Nadda interacted with health ministers and department secretaries of states through video-conferencing to enquire about their preparedness, and said his Ministry aims to achieve full immunisation of more than 90 per cent children by 2020.

'Mission Indradhanush' aims at fully immunising more than 89 lakh children who are either unvaccinated or partially vaccinated and those who have not been covered during routine immunisation for various reasons. The Mission aims to immunise them against seven life-threatening but vaccine-preventable diseases -- diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, tuberculosis, polio, measles and hepatitis-B.

In the second phase, 352 districts have been selected including 279 mid-priority districts, 33 from North-East states and 40 districts from the phase one, where large number of missed-out children were detected.

"The second phase will commence from October 7 for a week. This will be followed by week-long intensified immunisation drives for three consecutive months starting from November 7 and December 7, 2015 and January 7, 2016. The Health Ministry will seek to reach an estimated 45 lakh children who have never received vaccines or remain partially- immunised in the second phase.

"The campaign will revisit the 40 districts because they did not meet even 50 per cent of their target population during the first phase," an official said.

Nadda, during his interaction, exhorted states to leave no stone unturned to ensure that the left-out and missed-out children of the routine immunisation programme in the country are provided full protection under this nationwide initiative.

"We aim to achieve more than 90 per cent full immunisation in the country by 2020 under Mission Indradhanush," he said.