WHO: Improving measles control in India
Feature
April 2013

India is building on its polio eradication campaign experience to ensure more children get vaccinated against measles.
Excerpt
It is now more than two years since a child has been infected with polio in India, once considered the global epicentre of the disease.

The country’s polio eradication campaign, led by the Government of India and its partners, including the World Health Organization, has been one of the biggest, most complex, and most meticulously implemented vaccination campaigns in human history.

Building on success of polio campaigns

Intense, six-day polio vaccination campaigns have been run several times a year in India since 1996. During each campaign, 2.3 million vaccinators go door-to-door, visiting 191 million homes to vaccinate 172 million children a year.

Now India is building on the success of the polio eradication strategy to ensure that more children are immunized against other dangerous illnesses.

Measles, for example, is still one of the leading causes of death in young children. A highly contagious disease, it spreads like wildfire in communities where children are unvaccinated. And because the virus reduces immunity, children who have had measles – especially those who are undernourished – may die of pneumonia, diarrhoea and encephalitis later on…

Full text at: http://www.who.int/features/2013/india_measles/en/index.html