The Hindu 08.02.2010
More than three lakh children covered during pulse polio drive
Special Correspondent
| Door-to-door mopping up drive to be carried out |
Photo: K. Ananthan 
Preventive measure: A child being administered polio drops in the city on Sunday. —
COIMBATORE: More than three lakh children were covered in Coimbatore district during the pulse polio immunisation drive.
Deputy Director of Health Services S. Senthilkumar said the coverage was 92 per cent. The target was 3,39,110 children in the 0-5 age group. The coverage was 3,11,583.
Over the next three days a door-to-door mopping up drive would be carried out to immunise those children who were not brought to the centres where polio drops were administered.
Totally, 1,299 centres, mobile units and transit immunisation centres (at railway stations, bus stands and airport) were put on Sunday to carry out the immunisation, Dr. Senthilkumar said.
The health official said 5,196 staff members drawn from the departments of health, education and nutrition meal were involved in the immunisation, along with doctors and members of the Rotary Clubs.
In the Coimbatore Corporation limits, arrangements were made to immunise more than one lakh children at 192 centres, including four mobile units, a press release from the civic body said.
Staff Reporter adds from Tirupur: The second phase of the pulse polio immunisation programme organised by the district administration to administer oral polio vaccine to 2,35,550 children concluded on Sunday evening.
Of the children identified under the programme, 1,69,957 were residing in rural areas and the rest from urban localities.
As many as 1,084 booths (968 in rural and 116 in urban) were set up to administer the vaccine.
Special booths
This included the special booths set up at bus stands, railway stations and places of tourism importance to cover the transit population.
Deputy Director of Public Health and Preventive Medicine V. Vijayalakshmi told ‘The Hindu’ that the health officials would be carrying out a door-to-door campaign this week to administer the polio vaccines to the children left out on Sunday. “During the first leg held in January, coverage was cent per cent in the district,” she added.
Dr. Vijayalakshmi said that the last case of poliomyelitis reported within the ‘Tirupur district limits’ was at Nambiampalayam under Avinashi block in 1998, which was in the then Coimbatore district.
