Govt pursuing Swasth Bharat mission with vigour: JP Nadda

Shimla, June 4: Swasth Bharat mission, aiming at providing affordable health services to all and immunisation of children under 'Mission Indradhanush' to bring down the mortality rate from 28 to single digit is being pursued with vigour, Union health minister J P Nadda today said.

Talking to media persons here, Nadda said that after the launch of Mission Indradhanush 40 lakh out of 90 lakh unimmunised and 70 lakh partially immunised children have been covered in the first phase started on April 7 and with increase of five per cent in each phase all the left out children would be immunised.

'Mission Indradhanush', covering immunisation against seven life-threatening but vaccine preventable diseases including diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, tuberculosis, measles and hepatitis-B has made good progress, the minister said.

Pentavalent vaccine including combination of five vaccines has also been introduced and to protect the children from preventable diseases, four new vaccines --Inactivated Polio, Adult Japanese Encephalitis, Rotavirus and Measles Rubella vaccines are proposed to be introduced as part of Universal Immunisation Programme, he added.

Nadda said that out of 201 high focus districts, accounting for nearly 50 per cent of unvaccinated or partially vaccinated children, 82 districts are in four states of UP, Bihar, MP and Rajasthan and the Mission will focus on 4,00,000 high risk settlements while 297 districts will be targeted in the second phase to commence from September 2015.

He said that the Ministry observed National Deworming Day on February 10, 2015 and against a target of 10.31 crore children in 1-19 year age group, 8.98 crore children received deworming tablets.

Besides launching action Plan for elimination of Kala-Azar by 2015, benefitting about 11.65 crore population other preventive programmes like Intensified Diarrhoea Control, Integrated Action Plan for Pneumonia and Diarrhoea (IAPPD) and National Leprosy Eradication Programmes have also been launched.

Nadda said that Central Government Health Services (CGHS) Wellness centres would be opened in eleven states including Shimla in Himachal to facilitate serving and retired central government employees and National Health Policy would be announce soon after analysing the feed back from people on stakeholders on draft policy posted on the website.

PTI