The first phase of the three-week national campaign on measles-rubella vaccination to eliminate the two infectious diseases from the country concluded Thursday covering almost 97 per cent students of educational institutions.
Extended Programme of Immunisation (EPI) sources said out of 33,163,513 students of 170,000 school and colleges, 32,275,531 were vaccinated until the last day of the first phase campaign.
They said the drop-out students will be tried to be covered during the second phase campaign which began on Saturday to bring non-school going children including hard-to-reach boys and girls into the vaccination programme.
"We have got information from allover the country, the compilation of which shows that 97 per cent targeted school going children aged below 15 years were covered," said a consultant involved with the vaccination campaign.
He said during the second week of the campaign, the children aged nine years and older will get the vaccine from EPI centres throughout the country.
Unicef and World Health Organistaion (WHO) which have been involved with the 2014 campaign provide the technical support to the health ministry for making the national programme a success.
The ministry has taken the measles eliminating programme from a WHO data that the burden of measles accounted for five per cent of all under-five mortality. The United Nations selected routine measles vaccination coverage as an indicator of progress towards millennium development goal-4.
Global estimates of the burden of rubella that the number of infants born with congenital rubella syndrome in 2008 exceeded 110,000 which makes the disease a leading cause of preventable congenital defects.
The national immunistaion campaign on measles and rubella (MR) began on January 25 to cover wider population of 52 million children of nine years to below 15 years. Of the total, 32 million are pupils.
Sources said during the first phase, the campaign has got cooperation from all level of educational institutions of the country except urban areas.
More than 15 educational institutions mostly English medium schools in the Dhaka city refrained from arranging the vaccination programme in their respective campuses during the educational institution-based campaign week.
A panic has also been generated among the parents and children after reports of two deaths following vaccination which left the school authorities not to respond to the government programme.
The consultant said a motivational programme has already been taken to cover these schools during the current week. He said many of these drop out schools have understood the importance of the campaign and will arrange a date soon.
He also said the panic is not desirable as the cases of death were incidental, which were proven through investigations from national level.
The third week has been planned to review and monitor further the campaign to find drop outs from all level and bring them into the programme.
97pc students of instts covered in first phase
FE Report | Published: February 03, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
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