A child is administered polio drops at a Pulse Polio camp. File
| Photo Credit: C. Venkatachalapathy
The Andhra Pradesh government has identified 49.2 lakh children below the age of five for administering bivalent Oral Polio Vaccine (bOPV) as part of the Pulse Polio programme, beginning on Sunday (June 28, 2026), which is observed as the National Immunisation Day.
According to a press release from the Department of Health, Medical and Family Welfare, cooperation has been sought from different departments, including Municipal Administration and Urban Development, School Education, Women and Child Welfare, APSRTC, Panchayat Raj and Rural Development, Secondary Health, Public Health and Family Welfare, NUHM and Minority Welfare, for the successful conduct of the three-day programme.
In a meeting held on Friday (June 26, 2026) Health Principal Secretary S. Suresh Kumar reviewed district-wise arrangements, vaccine logistics, field deployment, digital reporting and inter-departmental coordination, and issued a slew of instructions to all officials to ensure that every booth, every household, every transit point and every high-risk habitation was covered.
A total of 29,873 polio booths, 59,746 house-to-house teams, 1,757 mobile teams for high-risk and migratory areas and 1,144 transit booths have been arranged across the State. More than 1.31 lakh field personnel are being deployed for the campaign. The State has received 68,67,740 doses of bOPV, which have been distributed to districts.
Vaccines would be administered to children at booths across rural and urban areas on June 28, and house-to-house verification taken up on June 29 and 30 to check whether all children aged 0 to 5 years had received polio drops.
The whole programme would be monitored through the A.P. Commissionerate of Health and Family Welfare (APCHFW) portal, the Principal Secretary said. Field-level entries will be made for booth, mobile, transit and house-to-house activities on the portal, from where district and State-level authorities can monitor coverage, identify missed children, track high-risk areas and review field progress.
Mr. Suresh Kumar directed District Collectors, District Medical and Health Officers and District Immunisation Officers to review APCHFW portal data during the campaign period and deploy supervisory teams wherever gaps were noticed.
He said special mobile teams would cover high-risk and migratory areas, including slums, nomadic settlements, construction sites, brick kilns, migrant labour colonies, industrial areas and other vulnerable habitations, and transit teams would be deployed at bus stations, railway stations, airports, major hospitals, markets, melas, bazaars and other public locations where children may be in transit.
Published – June 27, 2026 02:19 pm IST
