Pulse polio , Bivalent oral vaccine to combat polio

The Indian government will launch an archetype bivalent oral polio vaccine (BOPV) for the first time in the country today.

A single drop of this first-of-its-kind vaccine will provide protection against two deadly strains of polio, P1 and P3, which presently exist in the country. Of the two, P1 strain is the most virulent.

P2, a third type of the wild polio virus, was eradicated from India in 1999.

NID campaign

The National Immunization Day (NID) was launched by the honorable President Smt Pratibha Devisingh Patil yesterday by administering polio drops to 10 babies at Rashtrapati Bhawan.

The health authorities confirmed that close to 25 lakh kids will get the new drops in the initial stages of the campaign. In the next round, the bivalent vaccine will also be introduced in Uttar Pradesh.

As a consequence, two of the nations’ worst polio affected states will get the BOPV vaccine very soon. The overall target is to immunize 170 million kids in the NID drive.

India’s initiative in wiping out polio

The Pulse polio program was initiated in India in 1995 with the goal of wiping out polio. At that time close to 50,000 infections were reported every year.

The initiation of the campaign saw a drastic reduction in the number of paralytic cases due to polio and the infections were limited to a few hundreds only.

At present, India spends Rs 1,200 crore on polio control every year. Half of this amount is spent on purchasing vaccines.

In 2009, 721 cases of polio were reported throughout the country. Of these 641 were P3 cases while 79 were P1 cases. A lone case was a combination of both the strains.

State wise, UP and Bihar, accounted for 571 cases and 114 cases respectively.