Polio Day: Mass drive in Mumbai as govt vows to vaccinate 1 crore kids over next 5 days

A child gets oral polio drops at Dombivli railway station. Pic/Satej Shinde

On the occasion of Polio Day, thousands of children between the ages of 0 to 5 were vaccinated in the city. Meanwhile, the state has committed to providing polio vaccination to 1 crore infants over the next five days.

Sunita Sutar, a community health worker based in Bandra (West), mentioned that polio vaccination drives are probably the only times when health workers like herself do not have to convince people much. "This is one thing which anyone, anywhere, is aware of," she said.

The purpose of continuing these activities for the next five days, according to Sutar, is to reach the unreached population. "Sometimes parents also say their child already has a fever, so we visit them again after a couple of days for the vaccination," she said.

At her booth alone, about 75 infants were vaccinated. There were approximately 104 such booths set up all across H ward, under which Sutar's area falls. Dr Nitin Palve, the ward's medical officer of health, stated that over the next five days, officials aim to provide polio doses to 15,000 children.

In comparison, the M-East ward has the monumental task of vaccinating 82,000 children, according to its medical health officer, Dr Sanjay Funde. Dr Nitin Ambadekar, the additional director of health services for the state health department, also visited a few vaccination booths in this ward at the start of the day. "We will be vaccinating about 50,000 children today alone," Dr Funde said.

There are approximately 358 booths set up in M-East. "We have also deployed a sizable workforce of 700 to 800 people to administer doses to as many children as possible in our ward," he said.

The workforce mostly consists of health workers like Sutar, along with Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA), Anganwadi workers, and Auxiliary Nursing Midwives (ANM).

82k
No. of children to be vaccinated in M ward