Drum beating to create awareness on vaccination in Sirmaur

SOLAN: With the rate of immunisation being a low 72 per cent in Sirmaur district in a survey conducted by experts from the IGMC Shimla, the district administration has resorted to traditional methods of drum beating to create awareness about its usefulness.

Women outside an immunisation centre in a Sirmaur village.

Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan, January 14

With the rate of immunisation being a low 72 per cent in Sirmaur district in a survey conducted by experts from the IGMC Shimla, the district administration has resorted to traditional methods of drum beating to create awareness about its usefulness.

Sirmaur fared at the second lowest level in full immunisation coverage (FIC) in the state while the state’s FIC was a dismal 69.5 per cent, which was much lower than the national level of 74.2 per cent. An initiative to create awareness about immunisation in mothers was hence initiated in two adjacent blocks of Rajpura and Shillai, which is a mix of hill and plain areas.

Lalit Jain, DC, Sirmaur, while explaining the concept behind this pilot project said it involved talking to the mothers in remote villages and encouraging them to undertake vaccination for various disease like BCG, polio, DPR, measles, rubella, PCB, etc. In a bid to ensure the effectiveness of this campaign, the visit of the drum beater is being monitored by an android-based mobile application that marks the attendance by its geo coordinates. As many as 15 drum beaters have been engaged for this project from among the locals. Each drum beater was trained on the protocol of the project and asked to move to an identified village one day before a vaccination session and herald drums. On the day of the vaccination, the drum beater once again visits the village and announces the arrival of the vaccination team to encourage the mothers of the beneficiaries to visit the immunisation centres.

It startrd in August in Shillai and Rajpura blocks of the district where 54 drum beating sessions were undertaken and 535 were interviewed to gauge the effectiveness of this campaign. While 75 per cent people had heard the drum beating and 51 per cent people were aware of its purpose in Rajpura block, the results were as high as 99 per cent in the relatively remote Shillai block where 90 per cent people were aware of its objective.

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