It would involve commitment to technological innovation, community empowerment, and collaborative action.
Vaccines are one of the most effective tools in modern medicine and one of humanity’s greatest achievements. India’s immunisation journey began over two centuries ago when the country’s first smallpox vaccine was administered in Mumbai in 1802, laying the foundation for public preventive healthcare. More than a century later, preventive immunisation began in earnest in 1948 with the adoption of the International Tuberculosis Campaign, an initiative designed to stop the potentially deadly bacterial disease that mainly affects the lungs and killed an estimated 500,000 people a year in India in the late 1940s.
Yet it wasn’t until 1978 that India reached a turning point in its vaccine delivery framework and ability to deliver broader protective healthcare at scale. That year, the country launched the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) — later renamed the Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) — providing free vaccines against 12 vaccine-preventable diseases, including tuberculosis, polio, measles, and hepatitis B for mothers and children.
Today, it stands as one of the world’s largest public health programmes, and as one of the world’s largest national immunisation programmes, the UIP reaches over 2.67 crore newborns and 2.9 crore pregnant women annually.
Source : thehindubusinessline
