New Delhi, Apr 17: Government has decided to introduce the liquid pentavalent vaccine in six more states of Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Goa, Jammu & Kashmir and Puducherry from October 2012 to December 2014 under the free immunisation programme.
 It has approved an outlay of Rs 332.70 crores toward the cost of the vaccine which provides protection against five diseases -- Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenza B.
 The decision was taken at the 8th meeting of the Mission Steering Group of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) which also decided to relax the norms for providing mobile medical units (MMU) in each district under NRHM and approved providing up to 5 MMUs per district, against one MMU now.
 This will ensure that health care services are easily accessible even in remote areas. All MMUs funded under NRHM will have a universal name of "Rashtriya Mobile Medical Unit" and a common colour.
 The Steering group also approved an additional requirement of Rs 4.75 crore from domestic budget for research as well as strengthening supervision for introduction of pentavalent vaccine.
 The vaccine had been introduced on a pilot basis in Tamil Nadu and Kerala in mid December 2011.
 The initial response of the community has been very encouraging and more than one lakh children have been successfully vaccinated within the first month, the health Ministry claimed.
 After acknowledging the significance of Haemophilus influenzae b (Hib) vaccination, a decision was taken to continue inclusion of Haemophilus influenzae b (Hib) vaccines in Universal Immunization Program as liquid pentavalent vaccine (DPT+ Hep B+ Hib) in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
 The steering group - highest decision-making body of NRHM, also approved an outlay of Rs 4,249.04 crore for polio eradication strategy and to check polio resurfacing in view of India having taken off the list of WHO endemic countries.
 A proposal for modifying the hospitals and dispensaries scheme of AYUSH was also discussed and the ceiling of remuneration for various contractual manpower employed under the different components of the scheme was removed.
 Further incentives to ASHAs (Accredited Social Health Activist) were also approved at the meeting. An honorarium for performance based community level testing and creating awareness about use of iodated salt through Salt Testing Kits @ Rs 25/month to each ASHA on testing of atleast 50 salt samples per month for 303 endemic districts in the country was also approved.
 Besides, it was decided to extend financial support to Emergency Medical Transport System beyond three years and thus 20 per cent operational expenditure incurred by states on this would be supported by NRHM beyond three years under NRHM with the cap of Rs 3 lakh per year per ambulance.
 It was considered that services of ASHA should be used for counselling eligible couples for ensuring healthy spacing between births, for which the group decided to incentivise ASHAs.
 Addressing the meeting, Azad noted that during the 11th Plan substantial progress has been made under the NRHM which has started addressing issues of physical infrastructure, human resources, ambulances and other logistics.
 "However, substantial investments would be required to complete the task. The assurance that health would receive priority and increased funding in 12th Plan is reassuring," Azad said, hoping that the increase in funding in 12th Plan would help roll out the much-needed interventions to strengthen the primary health care and ensure that there is universal health coverage.

Lastupdate on : Tue, 17 Apr 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Tue, 17 Apr 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:00 IST