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Topic: Intensified Mission Indradhanush 3.0

Why in News?

• The States/Union Territories (UTs) have rolled out the first phase of Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI) 3.0 to cover children and pregnant women who missed the routine immunisation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background

• Immunization Programme in India was introduced in 1978 as ‘Expanded Programme of Immunization’ (EPI) by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. In 1985, the programme was modified as ‘Universal Immunization Programme’ (UIP) to be implemented in phased manner to cover all districts in the country by 1989-90 with the one of largest health programme in the world.
• Mission Indradhanush: To strengthen and re-energize the programme and achieve full immunization coverage for all children and pregnant women at a rapid pace, the Government of India launched “Mission Indradhanush” in December 2014.
• Intensified Mission Indradhanush : To further intensify the immunization programme, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi launched the Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI) on October 8, 2017. Through this programme, Government of India aims to reach each and every child up to two years of age and all those pregnant women who have been left uncovered under the routine immunisation programme/UIP.
• Intensified Mission Indradhanush 2.0 : To boost the routine immunization coverage in the country, Government of India has introduced Intensified Mission Indradhanush 2.0 to ensure reaching the unreached with all available vaccines and accelerate the coverage of children and pregnant women in the identified districts and blocks from December 2019-March 2020.

Intensified Mission Indradhanush 3.0

• Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on 19th February 2021 has launched Intensified Mission Indradhanush 3.0.
• The Union Minister also launched the IMI 3.0 portal and released the Operational Guidelines for IMI 3.0 and the awareness material/IEC package developed as part of the campaign.
• Focus of the IMI 3.0 will be the children and pregnant women who have missed their vaccine doses during the COVID-19 pandemic. They will be identified and vaccinated during the two rounds of IMI 3.0. Each round will be for 15 days each. Beneficiaries from migration areas and hard to reach areas will be targeted as they may have missed their vaccine doses during COVID19
• The IMI 3.0 will have two rounds starting from February 22 and March 22, 2021, and will be conducted in pre-identified 250 districts/urban areas across 29 States/UTs in the country.
• According to the guidelines released for IMI 3.0, there are 313 low-risk, 152 medium-risk and 250 high-risk districts.

Significance

• Every year, the UIP caters to the vaccination needs of 2.65 crore children and 2.9 crore pregnant women against 12 vaccine preventable diseases. Despite these efforts by all the states and Union territories, some children and pregnant women get missed out from this network.
• Mission Indradhanush aims to reach out to every dropped out and left out child and pregnant woman. There has been remarkable improvement in the immunisation coverage, which is also evident in the NFHS-5 data as available for 22 states.
• On the massive push to provide affordable healthcare facilities to the last citizen, the minister observed that implementing large campaigns like IMI 3.0 even during the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines is a clear indication of India's health system getting stronger day by day.
• IMI 3.0 aims to reach the unreached population with all the available vaccines under the UIP and thereby, accelerate the full immunisation coverage of children and pregnant women.