Special POLIO IMMUNISATION drive : Stool samples of people living in the Nalagarh slum, from where the latest case from Himachal was reported, sent to CRI, Kasauli

Getting its act together after a fresh case of polio was reported from Solan district, the Himachal Pradesh government has decided to conduct a special polio immunisation drive from December 6. The mop-up immunisation round aims to cover nearly 3 lakh children across the five districts of the state to check further outbreak of the disease.

The decision was taken on Monday in an emergency meeting of health officials with the World Health Organisation (WHO) representative in the state.

The government has, however, failed to reach a consensus on the need to give special coverage to the migrant population, mostly from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, under the special round of immunisation apart from the two national immunisation days.

Though the government officials accept that there is a large-scale migration of labour to Himachal from the endemic states of UP and Bihar, there has been no database so far of the approximate number of the floating population of children in the age group eligible for immunisation.

With the latest case detected in Solan, Himachal sees the return of polio after three years. The two-and-a-half-year-old son of a migrant labour from Uttar Pradesh has been tested positive with wild type-3 polio virus. The child has a past history of travel from Badaun, one of the high-risk districts of Uttar Pradesh.

Himachal Health Minister Rajiv Bindal said: “After the boy developed some problems, he was taken to a private clinic instead of the nearby Panjara Public Health Centre. It is learnt that his parents had missed out on the polio camps.”

... contd.