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Despite the success in administering vaccines to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic from spreading, progress of India’s national immunisation programme is not at all satisfactory. The country has failed to meet the target of providing DTP (Diphtheria, Tetanus and Pertussis) and Measles shots in 2023, according to a report published by WHO-UNICEF. The report has claimed that the country failed to immunise 1.6 million children in 2023, a basic requirement for primary health care. More worrying is the fact that India has been placed with countries like Nigeria, Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It is in the list of world’s top-10 countries where more than half of the zero-dose children live. Such underperformance by India is very worrying as every year 26 million babies are born in the country. It’s a pity that despite claiming to have an efficient and sound immunisation programme, India remains a worst performing country in terms of providing basic vaccines to toddlers. So, if India cannot improve its performance in this field, it will have a huge population without immunisation in the near future.
As a matter of fact, India’s immunisation programme was going well until it was confronted by pandemic-induced disruptions. During the pandemic, the focus was on saving people from the deadly virus, which claimed thousands of lives all over the world. So, the country had rightly put emphasis on combating the disease, and in directing efforts toward Covid, it sidelined its national immunisation programme. It was expected that everything would back to normal once the pandemic was over, but the country is yet to reach pre-pandemic levels in its immunisation efforts. Fresh from the success of administering COVID-19 vaccines to the people, India did relatively well in 2021 and 2022. But the unexpected slump in 2023 has come as a shock, eroding the gains made in previous two years. The failure is a huge setback as within the list of the top-10 countries which have failed to properly implement the immunisation programme, India is the only country with a proper administrative setup to make such endeavours successful, while most other countries on the list are either failed or failing states.
Thus, there is an urgent need to bring the focus back on the national immunisation programme, the first line of defence against many diseases which hamper the growth of infants. Considering the rate of childbirth in India, it is likely that the country will have the world’s biggest population of new-born children in danger of fatalities or disabilities, even if a miniscule section of these infants are left out of the immunisation net. It is time now for us to immunise our children with renewed vigour, providing everyone the necessary health security shield. It will be our utter failure if we allow the national programme to dwindle further. The immunisation programme should be switched to mission mode as was undertaken during the pandemic, to bring the programme back on track. While there is no dearth of vaccines in cities, the same should be made available in all primary rural health centres to ensure a healthy life for every child born in the country.