According to the department, no fresh case of Diphtheria has been reported in the locality
MALAPPURAM: The district health department has gone into a tizzy as the highly contagious diphtheria is expected to spread among children, who have not been vaccinated in Malappuram due to the shortage of vaccines.
In spite of the hue and cry over the serious spread of the disease, the health department has failed to source the required amount of vaccines to successfully complete the first and second phase of the vaccination campaign that was scheduled in the last and first week of September and October respectively.
Due to the insufficient stock of vaccines with the department, the vaccination drive has been halted and will resume only when the stocks are loaded again.
According to district medical officer Ummer Farook, the department is expecting to reload the vaccines required for the completion of the vaccination programme in the next few days and the drive will resume as soon as the vaccines are bought.
“Till date 30,000 vaccines have been made use of for the campaign and we urgently require 70,000 more vaccines to complete the campaign drive”.
In the first phase, nearly 23,000 children below the age of 5 and all other children up to the age of 15 were vaccinated during the special drive.
The District Panchayath has started their mission to collect the data of more children under the age of 15 for the vaccination drive which is provided free of cost to the children.
As per the campaign chart of the department, the immediate phase of vaccination was listed before September 30 and the second phase was scheduled from October 1 to 10.
But the department is yet to complete the requirements of vaccines to complete the first phase and the second phase of campaign had to stop due to insufficient number of vaccines.
According to the department, no fresh case of Diphtheria has been reported in the locality.
