EDO Health terms public response to measles vaccination drive highly positive

Rawalpindi
The district health department is satisfied with the public response to an on-going measles crash activity under which children from six months of age to 10 years of age are being vaccinated against the highly contagious infection of the respiratory system.
The parents are positively cooperating with the teams of the health department busy administering anti-measles injections to their children and we are hopeful in achieving the target set for the two-week measles vaccination campaign that was started on January 26, said Executive District Officer (Health) Dr. Khalid Randhawa while talking to ‘The News’ on Saturday.
He added the district health department has been following a standard monitoring strategy to ensure quality of work by the mobile and fixed teams formed for carrying out the activities under the campaign. We have set a target of vaccinating a total of 13,86,937 children between the age of six months and 10 years, he said. To a query, he said the health department is confident that it would be able to administer measles vaccine to over 95 per cent of the children taken as target till February 9, the last day of the measles crash activity.
He explained that a total of 540 outreach (mobile) teams and 192 fixed teams have been formed to carry out the activity while a total of 197 union council medical officers have been monitoring the activities. Each team is comprised of one skilled health official, vaccinator, one assistant and two persons for social mobilization.
It is important that in most of the anti-polio drives launched in recent past, the district health departments in Punjab could not cover over 80 per cent of the child population set as target. When asked, Dr. Randhawa said the response of public to measles vaccination campaign is much better as compared to the public response towards anti-polio drives.
Measles is a highly contagious infection of the respiratory system caused by a virus. Measles is considered as one of the leading causes of death in young children. It spreads like wildfire in communities where children are unvaccinated. It is characterized by severe coughing, sneezing, runny nose, high fever, watery red eyes and full-body rash. The measles virus reduces the immunity and children who have had measles – especially those who are undernourished – may die of pneumonia, diarrhea and encephalitis later on.
It is important that population in Pakistan faced a severe measles epidemic in 2012 and 2013 that is termed as the longest epidemic of the infection in known history. To a query, Dr. Randhawa said the public response towards measles campaign is positive mainly because most of our population takes administration of injections as more serious than administration of vaccine orally. He said to achieve the desired results from the campaign, he himself has scheduled visits to all seven tehsils of the district for monitoring the activities.