Measles vaccination is considered an important step towards eradication of the disease worldwide. The disease has various complications and high childhood morbidity in India. The complications are otitis media, life-threatening pneumonia, sub-acute sclerosing panencephalitis. We aim to achieve 97% vaccination in all districts by 2020. There were one lakh 58 thousand deaths due to measles in our country in 2011.
Still in states like Bihar the coverage is around 67%. Now we have a good vaccine with neomycin, sorbitol as preservative and is also heat sensitive. We are way ahead of polio, so why not measles. Therefore we should follow the example of developed countries which adopted a ring immunization technique in its eradication. Ring immunization means that surrounding the child affected with the disease by vaccinated people or survivors of measles ie those immune to measles to stop the…
