New Delhi: Mansukh Mandaviya, Minister of Health and Family Welfare, said on Tuesday that the Mission Indradhanush immunisation drive raised the number of immunised children aged 12 months to 23 months by 14.4% in 2021.

Mandaviya took to Twitter to express her feelings, saying, "Children's health has always been a top priority for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Mission Indradhanush is also conducting a vaccination drive for children across the country. As a result, the number of children who have been vaccinated has increased dramatically."

He also mentioned statistics from the National Family Health Survey -5, which showed that the number of vaccinated children aged 12 to 23 months was 62 percent in 2015-2016 and 76.4 percent in 2019-21. This represents a 14.4% growth in just over four years.

The ultimate goal of Mission Indradhanush is to ensure that infants under the age of two are fully immunised with all available vaccines, as well as pregnant women.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi set up the Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI) in 2017 to further accelerate the immunisation programme, with the goal of reaching every child under the age of two and all pregnant women who have been left out of the standard immunisation programme. The goal of the special effort was to boost immunisation coverage in a few districts and cities so that more than 90% of people were immunised by December 2018.

In order to increase routine immunisation coverage in India, the government launched Intensified Mission Indradhanush 2.0, which aims to achieve full immunisation coverage in 272 districts across 27 states, as well as at the block level (652 blocks) in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, among hard-to-reach and tribal populations.

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