NEW DELHI: Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry will hold special immunisation weeks to strengthen its ambitious routine immunisation programme in the States having traditionally low coverage. These will be held in January, February and March this year. The Ministry has provided additional inputs and funds for the purpose.

The special drive will be carried out in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Uttaranchal, West Bengal, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Meghalaya, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.

During the drive, one week in each of these months will be observed as the special immunisation week.

The target groups identified for this drive are religious groups that oppose vaccination, politically or socially marginalised populations or minority groups, refugees, internally displaced persons, migrant workers, transient populations and communities at the international borders.

Also to be covered are populations known to have a disproportionate share of disease burden and those living in poor sanitary conditions or difficult terrains.

Being described as a national initiative to strengthen routine immunisation through identification of population without access, the Health Ministry officials said the special provision would be aimed primarily at people living in remote areas and urban slums.

However, the Ministry will ensure that the drive does not affect the implementation of the polio eradication efforts in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar where the weeks will be planned between the supplementary National Immunisation Day rounds for polio eradication.

As per the strategy drawn by the Ministry for implementation of the special drive, the venues for immunisation in the urban areas will include anganwadi centres, family planning centres, madrasas, mosques and private dispensaries.

In the rural and tribal areas, the community health workers will be asked to give priority to the villages and habitations that are never or rarely reached followed by those where immunisation was planned but not held during previous 2-4 months, and villages where routine immunisation is normally done but coverage is low.

The routine immunisation programme is one of the main focus areas under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).

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