Saturday, September 23 2006 12:31 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Alarmed at the rising number of polio cases, the Government has decided to go in for a fresh intensive round of immunisation throughout the country from November 5 this year. About 135 million children will be covered.

With 297 polio cases being detected against 66 last year, the special focus will be on states like UP, which alone has 269 cases.

Seventeen cases have been detected from Bihar. At a meeting with health officials of Maharashtra, Delhi, Haryana, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Jharkhand, the Union health and family welfare minister Anbumani Ramadoss asked the states to seek innovative ways of convincing communities to go for immunisation.

The special focus will be on UP which had Moradabad as the epicenter for this year's outbreak. Other cases have been reported from Bareilly and Meerut sub-divisions.



According to health ministry officials, this year's outbreak has re-infected previously polio-free areas in UP. One reason for this is the increase in the number of children not immunised in western UP. In vulnerable areas, there will be a series of routine immunisation week campaigns to reduce the number of children susceptible to the polio infection. It has been decided to use inject able polio vaccines (IPV) in these areas.

"We are not blaming any community but the fact is that about 70 per cent of the children among minorities are still not covered by immunisation.," Ramadoss said.

Meanwhile, the Uttar Pradesh strain of the virus has spread to neighbouring Nepal and Bangladesh as well as two African countries. All these four nations had been polio-free. Ramadoss will meet WHO officials in Geneva shortly.