The United Nations Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has applauded the Uttar Pradesh government led by CM Yogi Adityanath for successfully immunising all children of the state against Japanese Encephalitis and Acute Encephalitis Syndrome. The government of UP has been carrying out the immunisation and awareness drive under the flagship ‘Dastak’ campaign.
https://twitter.com/UNICEFIndia/status/989094957872025608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The UP government had launched the Dastak programme in February 2018, with an aim to immunise every child under 15 years of age and carry out widespread sanitation and awareness programmes. The campaign was planned as a holistic programme to educate and provide facilities to the families, not only for vaccination but also for prevention and treatment of the disease.
With regards to the drive, Yogi Adityanath had stated that, for the 38 districts of UP affected by the disease the state health department would be made the nodal agency and other departments like urban development, Panchayati Raj, Women and Child Welfare, Rural Development, Medical Education, Animal Husbandry and basic education departments would work under them.
The target for completion of vaccination work was set for April and the UP government, as claimed by UNICEF, has achieved it. As Japanese encephalitis is a vector-borne disease, the UP government gave equal importance to sanitation and awareness drives. Health workers, teachers and Asha workers as a result organised camps, visiting door to door and carrying out vaccination and awareness drives in the schools and localities.
https://twitter.com/CMOfficeUP/status/989085178927738882?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
A video released by the Department of Health and Family Welfare states that, under the Dastak programme, Asha workers visited 26,33,837 households for awareness drives and 32,03,785 children under the age of 15 years were vaccinated against the disease.