CHENNAI: Greater Chennai Corporation launched a special drive on Wednesday to get the consent of parents to administer the measles-rubella vaccine to their children studying in corporation schools. This comes a day after health minister C Vijaya Bhaskar said the government would make the vaccination mandatory if parents continued to resist the drive.

Zone-wise teams have been formed in Chennai with health and education
officials to talk to parents in schools. “We vaccinated 9,000 of our
students today,” said corporation deputy commissioner for education M
Govinda Rao. “All parents are not on board yet, they had a lot of
questions and were worried because they were misinformed.” About 40% of
corporation school children have been given the vaccine. On Wednesday,
through Parent-Teacher Association and school heads, parents were
brought to school for an interaction.

Private schools in the city have been conducting vaccination camps.
Many schools, despite government instruction to make the vaccine
mandatory, issued ‘willingness forms’ asking parental consent. At Shree
Nikethan Group of schools, about 60 anxious parents showed up on campus
to see if the vaccination went on smoothly. This, says correspondent P
Vishnucharan, comes from a lack of knowledge about rubella and safe
vaccination procedures. “Parents are reading up things on the internet,
from conflicting sources. The health department could have instead
issued posters and flyers with information on the condition, and the
vaccination to allay these apprehensions,” he said. Although 90% of
parents are okay with the vaccine, the rest are anxious, he said.