New Delhi: Claiming that India's immunisation programme is the largest public health initiative globally, the Health Ministry on Thursday said that it targets a massive cohort of 2.6 crore children and 2.9 crore pregnant women, annually through 1.2 crore vaccination sessions.
"Given the large population size of India, it has the highest number of vaccinated children across the countries. Full immunisation coverage of the country for the financial year 2023-24 stands at 93.23 per cent," the Ministry said while downplaying some media reports about the high number of 'zero dose children' in India.
It said that India's immunisation programme is the largest public health initiative globally. "Under 'Mission Indradhanush', 5.46 crore children and 1.32 crore pregnant women have been vaccinated, till 2023," the Ministry said.
With consistent efforts to reach and vaccinate all eligible children against vaccine-preventable diseases, the Ministry said that India has been able to achieve a noteworthy reduction in the Under-5 Mortality Rate (U5MR) declining from 45 per 1000 live births in 2014 to 32 per 1000 live births (SRS 2020).
"In addition, India has widened the basket of vaccines with the introduction of six new vaccines under the UIP to increase the breadth of protection since 2014," it said. The Ministry said that there have been some media reports stating that in comparison to other countries, India has a high number of 'zero dose children' – children who did not receive any vaccine, according to a recent UNICEF report.
"These reports depict an incomplete picture of the country's immunisation data, as they do not factor in the population base and immunisation coverage of the countries compared," the Ministry said.
Giving statistics, the Ministry said that in India, for most of the antigens, the coverage is more than 90 per cent, which is at par with other high-income countries including New Zealand (DTP-1 93 per cent), Germany & Finland (DPT-3 91 per cent), Sweden (MCV-1 93 per cent), Luxembourg (MCV-2 90 per cent), Ireland (PCV-3 83 per cent), United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (RotaC 90 per cent).
"Even if India's coverage of 83 per cent is compared to Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV), which falls at the lowest bracket, it is much higher than the global figures of 65 per cent," the Ministry said.
The Ministry further said that India provides the maximum number of WHO-recommended vaccines under the UIP in comparison to most of the other countries. "The mean coverage for India is 83.4 per cent, which is more than 10 percentage points of the global coverage. With a high level of coverage of OPV and IPV, India has successfully maintained 13 years of polio-free status since the last polio case was detected in 2011,” the Ministry said.
