Abstract
BackgroundCountrywide 5.9 million, 0-11 Month old children are immunized annually by EPI (Expended Program on Immunization) against 8 vaccine preventable diseases including measles and so on. Unfortunately the basic immunity centers are not uniform throughout the country. Each center provides services to about 27000 people which is inadequate. The purpose of this study was to explore the development of EPI Pakistan in terms of immunization of measles.MethodsNucleotide sequences were analyzed by neighbor joining method (bootstrap test) using Bio- edit and MEGA-5 software to find evolutionary relationship between wild type measles strain and vaccine strain (Edmonston strain) used in Pakistan. For statistical analysis of data SPSS 16 was used.ResultsCurrently 1.3 vaccinators are working at each U C (union council) which according to national EPI policy should be at least 2. About 56% and 44% children of age 0-11 months did not received second dose of measles in the last two years respectively. Out of these 4231 cases which were reported last year, 1370 have received their first dose of measles vaccine.ConclusionSeroconversion and seroprevalence study of the vaccine and field strain of measles virus is needed to confirm whether its failure is due to service unavailability or vaccine in-affectivity.
Highlights
Immunization is a sole component of preventive medicine and is an important need of the day
EPI was initiated by the World Health Organization (WHO) In 1974 [2] and in Pakistan it was started in 1978 with the definitive objective of eliminating six common diseases (Tetanus, Diphtheria, Tuberculosis, Pertussis, Polio, and Measles) in the country which are vaccine preventable [3]
EPI program official database was analyzed for this study. 12 nucleotide sequences of polyprotein gene of measles virus strain reported in different areas of Pakistan and that of Edmonston strain used in measles vaccine in Pakistan were retrieved from NCBI gene Bank Data Base
Summary
Immunization is a sole component of preventive medicine and is an important need of the day. EPI was initiated by the WHO In 1974 [2] and in Pakistan it was started in 1978 with the definitive objective of eliminating six common diseases (Tetanus, Diphtheria, Tuberculosis, Pertussis, Polio, and Measles) in the country which are vaccine preventable [3]. For many years childhood immunization program coverage remains low in Africa and Asia due to several reasons. These countries carry an inconsistent burden of global measles deaths. Countrywide 5.9 million, 0-11 Month old children are immunized annually by EPI (Expended Program on Immunization) against 8 vaccine preventable diseases including measles and so on. The purpose of this study was to explore the development of EPI Pakistan in terms of immunization of measles
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