August 24, 2019
State Govt introduces rotavirus vaccine in govt hospitals
The State Health Department on Wednesday, August 21 introduced the rotavirus vaccine (RVV) in all the government-run medical college hospitals, district and sub-divisional hospitals, and health centres in order to immunise children from diarrhoea. The minister of State for health launched the vaccine.
Rotavirus is a leading cause of diarrhoea in children less than five years of age. The government has chalked out a detailed plan to vaccinate the children with this vaccine.
RVV details
According to a detailed press statement issued by the director of health services, RVV will be administered orally to the children with a specially manufactured single-use syringe. Trained health workers will be carrying out the vaccination programme, for which purpose the Health Department has started a comprehensive training programme involving 80,298 health workers.
A total of five doses of RVV would be given. Three doses will be given to all infants starting from six weeks of age while the last two would be administered on the children attaining the ages of 10 weeks and 14 weeks, respectively, according to the statement. The statement also said the target of the Health Department is immunise 14.65 lakh infants.
Comprehensive vaccination coverage
Bangla has a very high coverage of vaccines (95 per cent fully immunised as per the Centre’s Health Management Information System (HMIS) data for 2018-19. The State also has a strong public health system.
The press statement said that the State Government is quite hopeful that the acceptance and coverage of RVV will also be similarly high, which will be able to prevent deaths caused by diarrhoea. The rotavirus vaccine is a specific measure which can prevent severe diarrhoea by 74 per cent.
Source: Millennium Post
