VELLORE: As per the Universal Immunisation programme launched by the government of India, Pentavalent Vaccine will be launched in Tamil Nadu on Saturday. Vellore is all set for the statewide launch, to be held at Alamelumangapuram Primary Health Centre(PHC) here, which falls in the assembly constituency of the health minister Dr Vijay.Vijay’s colleague A Mohamed John, minister for Backward class welfare will hand over the vaccines to the officials on the occasion.The Pentavalent vaccine contains five antigens: Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Hepatitis B and Haemophilus Influenzae Type B (Hib). India becomes the 171st country to introduce vaccination against Hib with the United States and Finland starting it in the early 1990s.While Kerala has already launched the programme of administering Pentavalent vaccines a couple of days back, Tamilnadu is launching it in Vellore on Saturday, said Deputy director of health services Dr Somasundaram.The Pentavalent formulation has several programmatic advantages as it halves the number of injections per child and reduces the requirement of cold chain storage space besides easing management of logistics and data. Hib infection causes pneumonia and meningitis that kill close to 5 lakh children every year in India. Meningitis can also result in crippling disabilities.While the Pentavalent vaccine is being manufactured by some Indian companies, it is available in the market and is considered expensive (ranging from `2,500 per ten doses).However,UIP has brought this vaccine free of cost in the public domain to help the people, especially poor and the deprived sections. The vaccine would be made available in all the PHCs (and their sub-centres), government hospitals and private hospitals which collaborate with government programmes.On Saturday, the vaccine would be administered on babies who are 45 days old. The inaugural ceremony would mark administration of 14 doses while the actual public administration would begin from December 21 across the state. There would be no change in vaccine administration schedule of the Pentavalent vaccine as compared to the earlier trivalent vaccine. The first dose would be given after the completion of 45 days, the second after one month and the third in the following month. The booster dose for DPT would be scheduled after one and half years followed by measles shots in the next one-year period.The ministers, on this occasion would also launch the ‘Tobacco Free Districts Programme’ in Vellore, Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts. Under this programme, the health department would be empowered to prevent sale of tobacco products to minors, sale in the vicinity of educational institutions and ban on public smoking. Advertisement relating to promotion of tobacco products would also be monitored by the department which has already formed special teams at the block levels across district.
Comments
0 comment