District Development Commissioner Shopian, Mohammad Aijaz today convened a meeting of District Task Force to review the preparedness of Intensified Pulse Polio Immunization (IPPI) campaign in the district.During the meeting, Nodal Officer informed the DDC about preparations for immunization phase first scheduled on January 28, 2018. He said that as many as 215 vaccination booths would be set up across the district during the campaign to cover 43371 children in 0-5 year age group for vaccination.The meeting was also briefed that 7 transit camps, 11 mobile teams along with 42 supervisors, 3 district monitors will be deployed in the district for polio immunization campaign in the district.The DDC, who is also chairperson of District Health Society Shopian, directed the concerned officers to focus on high-risk areas including slums and nomadic populations where chances of polio are on the higher side.He said that no children below 5 years should be left without administering polio vaccination in the district and called upon the officers of Health, ICDS, Social Welfare and Education departments to work in tandem in making the district polio-free.
Among others, Executive Engineer R&B, Chief Education Officer, Chief Medical Officer, Block Medical Officer, CDPOs, and other district officers of various departments were present on the occasion.Later on, DDC highlighted the need of raising more awareness about leprosy and ways to deal with it effectively. He said that thrust of ongoing ‘Sparsh leprosy awareness campaign’ should be to promote community participation to reorient the delivery of the service of diagnosis and treatment of leprosy in its early stages from the centralized top-down delivery driven approach to decentralized community based demand-driven approach. He also stressed on empowering the PRIs and local communities to take over the responsibility of sensitizing and motivating people for stigma reduction and discrimination and for early self-reporting for diagnosis and treatment.