Bhubaneswar, Sept 8 (PTI) The Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI.50) drive to identify and register all children under the age of five will be launched in Odisha on September 11, an official said on Friday.

The drive will also identify and register pregnant women who missed their vaccine doses, director of family welfare Bijaya Kumar Panigrahy said.

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The drive intends to vaccinate 1.04 lakh unvaccinated or partly vaccinated children and 19,896 pregnant women in 314 blocks of all the 30 districts of the state, he said.

“Odisha is committed to immunise all under-five children who may have been left out or dropped out of the vaccination programmes. Our objective is to vaccinate every child,” the official said.

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As mothers cannot be ignored in the drive, all those who are pregnant and have missed being vaccinated will be covered by it, he said.

The drive will be carried out in three rounds between September and November 2023 with each round spanning six days. The first round will be held from September 11 to 16, 2023, while the second and third rounds will be held from October 9 to 14 and November 6 to 11 respectively, Panigrahy said.

The full immunization coverage in Odisha has increased from 36.1% (NFHS 1 report, 1992-93) to 90.5% (NFHS 5 Report, 2019-21). This has significantly reduced vaccine-preventable diseases and the under-5 mortality rate in the state, he said.

UNICEF social and behaviour change specialist Sugata Roy said, “Children and pregnant mothers may miss immunisation due to lack of knowledge about the benefits of vaccines. We will educate households and mobilise the families for increasing vaccination.”

Since 2015 ten Mission Indradhanush drives have been successfully conducted in the identified districts of Odisha, officials said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)