There’s been recent news regarding the rollout of the Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI) 3.0 scheme, a comprehensive initiative targeting children and pregnant women who missed their routine immunisation during the trying times of the Covid-19 pandemic. This article delves into the key aspects of this scheme as well as its context within India’s broader immunisation efforts.
Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI) 3.0 Scheme: An Overview
The primary objective of the IMI 3.0 scheme is to reach out to those populations that have not received all available vaccines under the Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP). The main aim is to accelerate the complete immunization coverage of children and pregnant women.
The scheme sets out plans for two rounds of immunisation in 2021 across 250 district or urban areas, which have been selected from across 29 States/UTs. These selected areas have been classified as 313 low risk, 152 medium risk, and 250 high risk districts. Especially targeted are beneficiaries from remote or migration-prone areas, as they may have missed their scheduled vaccine doses amidst the pandemic disruption.
Significance of IMI 3.0 Scheme
The IMI 3.0 intends to bolster India’s progress towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, principally by enhancing the health and safety of vulnerable populations through immunisation.
The Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP)
The UIP began as the ‘Expanded Programme of Immunization (EPI)’ in 1978, introduced by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. It was later modified to the ‘Universal Immunization Programme (UIP)’ in 1985. The Programme had several objectives, namely expanding immunization coverage, improving service quality, establishing an effective cold chain system up to the health facility level, introducing a district-based performance monitoring system, and striving for self-sufficiency in vaccine production.
An Overview of UIP’s Impact and Challenges
The UIP plays a crucial role in preventing mortality and morbidity among children and pregnant women from 12 vaccine-preventable diseases. However, the progress of increasing immunisation coverage had been sluggish, growing at the rate of only 1% per year between 2009 and 2013. To ramp up this coverage, Mission Indradhanush was conceptualised and rolled out in 2015 to rapidly raise full immunization coverage to 90%.
Mission Indradhanush: Aiming for Comprehensive Immunization
The Mission sought to fully immunize over 89 lakh children who were either unvaccinated or partially vaccinated under UIP. It focused on children under 2 years of age and pregnant women for immunization and provided vaccines against 12 diseases, including diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, tuberculosis, hepatitis B, meningitis and pneumonia, Haemophilus influenzae type B infections, Japanese encephalitis (JE), rotavirus, pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) and measles-rubella (MR).
Intensified Missions Indradhanush 1.0 and 2.0
Intensified Mission Indradhanush 1.0, launching in October 2017, notably shifted focus towards urban areas, which were a gap in Mission Indradhanush. Aiming for over 90% immunisation by December 2018 instead of 2020, it targeted select districts and cities.
Following this, Intensified Mission Indradhanush 2.0 marked 25 years of the Pulse Polio programme in 2019-20, aiming for full immunization coverage in 272 districts over 27 States. It set the ambitious target of achieving a minimum of 90% pan-India immunisation coverage by 2022.