Delegates at the seminar in Ranchi on Monday. Telegraph picture

Ranchi, Oct. 20: The state’s child immunisation programme has achieved a coverage of 56 per cent in the last five years, said the health department officials in a seminar today.

The meet was organised to prepare strategies to improve the programme further to achieve a coverage of 80 percent in the next three years.

A new scheme would be launched in Gumla tomorrow to bring the villagers to the block-level immunisation centres. The scheme is called Village Initiative For Block Health Access (VIBHA).

This initiative was taken after the successful implementation of another programme Mamta, aimed at tracking the mother and the child care programme in the state.

As reported, Mamta considerably lowered the infant as well as maternal mortality rate during pre and postnatal phase. It also helped in improving the immunisation status in the tribal heartland.

Under the VIBHA programme, the health workers of different NGOs would campaign house-to-house and distribute iron, folic acidtablets and syrups, bleaching powder, and malaria medicines.

Meanwhile, the health department would be strengthening vaccine supply and cold chains to improve availability of the vaccines.

Today’s workshop was jointly organised by state health department, USAID, CARE, UNICEF and WHO. The state health minister Bhanu Pratap Shahi, lauded the combined efforts of health workers especially the anganvadi volunteers, ANMs and CDPOs who worked in the field, for the improvement in immunisation coverage.

State reproductive and child health (RCH) officer Vijay Shankar Narayan Singh said that the health department would soon provide mobility support to the immunisation programme which was hitherto not feasible due to lack of fund.

“Four percent of total expenditure can be used for mobility support. Besides we are also planning to introduce waste disposal bin in different districts of the state for bio medical waste,” said the RCH officer.

“We have already appointed state consultant officer and block account manager so that the workers do not feel financial constraint while carrying out the immunisation programme,” he added.