Immunisation Is A Critical Interventions For Saving Children’s Lives, Says Expert

New Delhi: Researchers across the globe are hard at work for developing a vaccine for COVID-19. Vaccines have helped the world tackle many deadly and highly contagious diseases like polio and measles and still continue to do so. With an aim to promote the use of vaccines, the World Health Organization celebrates the last week of April as World Immunisation Week.

The children are our future and to ensure we protect an entire generation, the key is to immunise. In India immunisation is the most cost-effective intervention to protect our children from serious diseases.

Dr Sanjay Kapur, executive Director, JSI India,

Immunisation is one of the critical interventions for saving children’s lives. It is very easy, it is easily accessible, available for free at every government centre. Immunisation in the last 5-6 years in India has gained a lot of pace. What JSI helps the government of India is to do better training programmes, better monitoring,  better over-sight of getting new vaccines to the country.

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John Snow Inc. (JSI) provides extensive technical support to India’s national, state, and local public health initiatives including immunisation camps that help in fighting diseases. Bindu D Kumar, ANM, Kalkaji,

We usually give BCG, Hepatitis-B and Oral Polio Vaccine by birth. So if the child is fully immunised the severity of the virus will be low even if they get it. We want to make all the parents aware about the importance of immunisation.

If we get the vaccines on time then the child will be healthy and will safe from diseases like jaundice and polio, says Priyanka Kumari.

Asha workers visit us regularly and keep educating us on the importance of immunisation. We try and pass on all the information to other parents on why they should get their children immunised, said Gaurav Goyal.

India has the largest number of births globally but sadly also accounts for more than 20 per cent of child mortality worldwide. Despite the significant progress in our immunisation coverage, we still account for about 7.4 million children who are not immunised.