Rooting Out Rubella: Making It Mission Possible

The government needs to quash fears about safety of the rubella vaccine and establish its efficacy to achieve its goal of eliminating the disease by 2020

- Prathiba Raju

The Union Health Ministry is leaving no stone unturned to eliminate and control congenital rubella syndrome (CRS) by 2020, a disease that causes birth defects such as irreversible deafness and blindness in nearly 40,000 children every year. In a bid to eradicate the rubella virus and achieve success as in the case of polio and maternal and neonatal tetanus, the health ministry has launched a concerted, nation-wide measles-rubella vaccination (MR-VAC) campaign for children aged between nine months and 15 years.

However, phase-1 of the campaign which covers Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Goa, Puducherry and Lakshadweep has encountered a roadblock in the form of a controversy. There is a rumour going around through Whatsapp messages, SMS alerts, text and AV clips on social media forums that the vaccine is banned in the US as it causes serious side effects which include damaging a child’s immunity and memory. It is being pushed in India by the global pharma industry which is looking for a market to dump substandard products.

However, the Ministry remains undeterred in its course. Claiming that the government faces these hurdles each time a new vaccination campaign is launched, Dr Pradeep Haldar, Deputy Commissioner (Immunisation), Union Ministry of Health says, “During the polio vaccine campaign, we faced a similar kind of situation where people had a mistrust on the immunisation programme. Whenever the government has a targeted eradication campaign and tries to reach the last mile on a targeted time frame such an issue arises. But the government is well prepared to overcome these challenges. However, now they are bigger as the size of the number of children to be covered is three times more than what we did for polio programme. We are covering from children aged from nine months to 15 years.”