Over 14 lakh children administered polio drops in Haryana

The sub-national immunisation round of 'Pulse Polio 2013-14' was launched in 13 districts of Haryana and about 14.30 lakh children below the age of five years were administered polio drops on the first day of the 3-day campaign today at special booths.
These districts included Ambala, Faridabad, Gurgaon, Jhajjar, Karnal, Kurukshetra, Mewat, Palwal, Panchkula, Panipat, Rohtak, Sonipat and Yamunanagar, a spokesman of the state's Health Department said here today.
He said that about 55 per cent of the targeted children have been covered on the first day of the campaign.
The campaign was launched by state Health Minister Rao Narender Singh at Bhora Kalan village in Gurgaon.

The spokesman said that this campaign will continue for another two days as teams would go from house to house to administer polio drops to those children who were not uncovered today.
In order to smoothly carry out this campaign, a total of 10,573 booths were setup in the state and these were manned by about 42,000 health officials, volunteers, Anganwari workers and Accredited Social Health Activists.

About 2,100 officials supervised the activity apart from independent monitors of PGIMS, Rohtak and the WHO.
Approximately 26 lakh children are to be covered during this campaign in the state, he said, adding during this round, special attention has been paid to high risk areas like slums, isolated hutments, brick kilns, floating or migrating population and construction sites so that no child is left uncovered in these areas.

About 1,000 mobile teams are also working to cover all children in underserved and poorly approachable areas, he added.