India’s plan to eradicate measles, rubella

GS Paper 2

Syllabus: Issues Relating to Development and Management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health

Source: TH

Direction: The article highlights what needs to be done as well as the efforts made by India to eradicate measles and rubella.

Context: India set a goal (in 2019) to eradicate measles and rubella (MR) by 2023 after missing the previous deadline of 2020 (an earlier target of 2015 was also missed) for a number of reasons, worsened by the pandemic’s disruptions.

Why is eliminating MR crucial?

• According to the WHO, the measles virus is one of the world’s most contagious human viruses that kills more than 1,00,000 children every year globally and rubella is a leading cause of birth defects.
• An outbreak of measles in Maharashtra in 2022, particularly in Mumbai, killed 15 children among several hundred who contracted the infection.

What has India done to achieve targets?

• During 2010-2013, India conducted a phased measles catch-up immunisation for children aged 9 months-10 years in 14 States, vaccinating approximately 119 million children.
• Mission Indradhanush was launched in 2014 to ramp up vaccinating the unvaccinated population.
• During 2017–2021, India adopted a national strategic plan for MR elimination, and introduced rubella-containing vaccine (RCV) into the routine immunisation programme, besides launching a nationwide MR supplementary immunisation activity (SIA) catch-up campaign.
  • Additionally, it changed the focus of acute fever and rash surveillance from outbreak-based to case-based.
  • Also, the number of laboratories in the MR network has more than doubled.

What needs to be done to achieve the target?

• The main concern is the under-one-year population. But if the immunisation at 95% can be maintained, it will be possible.
• However, it needs to be done district by district –
  • Give each district a target to achieve the required rate of immunisation,
  • Conduct a robust fever and rash surveillance programme, testing for MR.
• Monitoring the progress and providing additional inputs to the districts that are lagging in implementing the immunisation.
• In the process, it is important to provide full support (improve their service conditions, and salaries) to the ground-level staff (village health nurses, ASHA, Anganwadi and ICDS workers) who implement the programme.

Conclusion:

• Having strong immunisation infrastructure, States like Tamil Nadu and Kerala will find it easier to reach the targets, unlike the other States where more effort will be needed to do so.
• As the saying goes – “a threat of infection anywhere is a threat everywhere,” India needs to improve its surveillance by finding, investigating, collecting, and testing a sample for every suspected case in every district across every State and UT.

Insta Links:

Measles

Prelims Links: (UPSC 2014)