Plan to reduce neonatal mortality rate

Visakhapatnam: Wider immunisation coverage against pneumonia and diarrhoea could prevent child deaths for every six minutes, said Indian Academy of Pediatrics  (IAP) officials. With a goal to reduce the national immunisation efforts to save the lives of children under age of five, IAP conducted a conference here on Tuesday.

Addressing the media, B Rajsekhar, President of IAP Visakhapatnam said that the country’s goal to reduce neonatal mortality to at least as low as 12 per 1,000 births and under five mortality rate to at least as low as 25 per 1000 births by 2030, so that India can meet its sustainable development goals. 

Immunisation is the most powerful tool to prevent child mortality through sustained and intensified vaccination programmes. He also added that they successfully rid the world of deadly diseases such as small pox and polio. “We must now grow for rapid scaling up of efforts to achieve full immunisation coverage to reduce the number of young lives lost due to vaccine preventable diseases”, he pointed out.

India’s Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) is amongst the world largest public health programme in which it targets 2.7 crore newborns every year with vaccines that are free of cost. It includes vaccines against leading preventable childhood diseases such as polio, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus, TB, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis, rotavirus diarrhoea and pneumonia.

According to the evaluated data from the National Family Health Survey(NFHS) during 2014-15, full immunisation coverage was 62 per cent in the country and 65.3 per cent in Andhra Pradesh, said Dr A Srikanth, Secretary, IAP (Visakhapatnam).  

According to World Health Organisation (WHO), immunisation prevents  about two to three million deaths a year and has helped to control several life threatening diseases and saved millions of lives, said Dr K Ravi Kiran Reddy, Vice-President, IAP (Visakhpatnam).