World Immunization Week is an initiative of World Health Organization (WHO) in
order to unite countries across the globe for a week of vaccination campaigns, public health education and information sharing. This year World Immunization Week scheduled from 21st April to 28th April.
Immunization week was an event, which highlighted the importance of protecting kids from vaccine preventable diseases. Vaccines are among the safest modern medical interventions and cost effective public health tools available for preventing diseases and death. Immunization not only protects vaccinated individuals but also helps a community by preventing and reducing the spread of infectious diseases through the Herd Immunity. Immunization is also a shared responsibility between Individuals, families, health workers, public health officials and everyone should work together to protect the kids in particular and the whole community in general.
Being a leader in free vaccination activity in Haryana, India Mother & Infant Foundation (MIF) participated in this program by spreading the importance of immunization in Narnaul and its adjacent areas.
During this week MIF’s specialized outreach team visited various play schools and met the parents and teachers. The team explained everyone about the importance of childhood immunization and about the services offered in MIF’s Free Vaccine Center. The team also announced for a painting competition about the importance of childhood immunization for the school kids. In order to participate in the competition, school kids were advised to submit their entries in MIF’s Free Vaccine Center within one week of the announcement of the competition. The idea behind this competition was to raise the awareness about the importance of immunization among the kids and encourage them to participate in MIF’s immunization program.
MIF also coordinated with other NGOs like Red Cross, Haryana Yuva Ranga Mancha and local Medical Centers in order to create awareness about all New and Under Utilized Vaccines (NUVI) like Hepatitis B, Typhoid, MMR etc.
At present MIF has been administering Hepatitis B, Typhoid and MMR vaccines free of cost to all the kids living in Narnaul and its near by villages. This project was launched in April 2010 and since then MIF administered more than 15,000 doses of vaccines to the kids. Apart from vaccination, MIF has been doing regular community health awareness program on Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) issues.
