Polio vaccination program did not start in four districts

  March 3, 2017 By: INSEC

According to RSS, the ‘special polio vaccination program, was not operated in four districts because of the obstruction created by health workers on March 3 and 4.  The other districts where the program was conducted also could not go smoothly, said Children’s health Division.

The Health workers locked the health institutions to obstruct the ‘special polio vaccination program, program at Siraha, Saptari, Mahottari and Kailali.

The government had decided to conduct the ‘special polio vaccination program’ in Kailali, Bardiya, Banke, Kapilavastu, Parsa, Bara, Rautahat, Dhanusha, Mahottari, Saptari, Siraha, Sunsari from Terai region and Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Lalitpur from Kathmandu Valley which includes 16 million 92 thousand 3 hundred and 15 children who are under the age of five.

Program Officer of polio vaccination under the Ministry of Health, Department of child health services, Basanta Shrestha said, it was easy to conduct program in Kapilavastu, Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bardiya districts. Whereas the vaccination program in Dhanusa district started at 5 in the evening.

He was also confident to start and complete the children polio vaccination program within March 5 and 6 in the obstructed districts.

Some of districts are still facing the obstruction even though the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Home Affairs were provided with the correspondence for security arrangements to operate the program if incase any disruption is made by health workers.

According to INSEC representative in the Dhanusa district, Binod Kumar Ravi Das, health workers from the district are in continuous movement from January 3 which is why the polio vaccination program has been affected and children are deprived of being vaccinated.

About more than 1 million children are deprived of polio vaccine due to the movement of health workers.

Even though the government decided to conduct polio vaccination program on March 4 in Dhanusa, the health workers locked district public health offices and started to protest from February 13 forwarding various demands affecting the program.

 Joint Trade Union Committee of health workers succeeded to fail the polio vaccination campaign that was set for 8am to 5 pm on March 4, said police.

 


Online desk