( A group of experts here have called for...)Experts Stresses the Need for National Vaccination Policy,Health

A group of experts here have called for a national policy on vaccination and sustained disease surveillance.

The American consulate here brought together a dozen immunization experts this week. The US has a Vaccine Action Programme (VAP) with India that began in 1984.

India's vaccination modules go by a plethora of names though it is part of a global programme to achieve 100 percent immunization for 22 diseases by 2015.

"India urgently needs a national immunization policy and a nationwide surveillance programme. It costs just 2 cents to track 15 notified diseases per child per year," said Jacob John, scientist emeritus at the department of virology at Vellore's Christian Medical College.

The national rate of success for the vaccination programme is 42 percent, with wide regional variation. While it is just 11 percent in Bihar and 44 percent in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu claims a success rate of more than 90 percent.

India's vaccination story began in 1948 when the BCG vaccine was offered for immunity from tuberculosis (TB). Sixty years on, the government estimates that 17 million people are carrying the TB virus.

India needs nearly 60 million BCG vaccines every year. It imports about 20 million doses through the UN children's agency UNICEF and manufactures the rest.

As part of a larger exercise known as the Routine Immunization Programme (RIP), which began in 1978, the BCG vaccination was administered at birth. It included a DPT vaccine for diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus.

The tetanus immunization begins with pregnant women and the first DPT dose is generally give to the baby at the age of one month, followed by doses at two-and-a-half months and three-and-a-half months.

It is repeated at one-and-a-half years, in certain states at three years and sometimes the dose is given at age five, 10 and 16 years.

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