Chandigarh: About 24 lakh children below five years of age were administered polio drops across Haryana today, the first day of the three-day national immunization programme.
Stating this here today, a Haryana Health Department spokesman said about 59 per cent of the total targeted children were covered at specially set-up 16,732 booths in all districts.
Those who could not be covered today would be administered polio drops by special teams who would go door to door for the next two days. A total of about 40 lakh children will be covered during this campaign in the state, he added.
In order to smoothly carry out this campaign, the specially set-up booths were manned by about 66,000 health officials, volunteers, anganwari workers, and accredited social health activists (ASHAs).
About 3,300 officials supervised the activity apart from independent monitors including those from the World Health Organization (WHO).
This activity was preceded by undertaking awareness campaign through print media, radio, TV, drum beating and other such activities.
During this round, special attention has been paid to high risk areas like slums, isolated hutments, brick kilns, floating or migrating population and those living at construction sites so that no child is left uncovered in these areas, he said.
