Focus: GS-III Science and Technology
Why in news?
India has pledged 15 Million US Dollars to GAVI, the international vaccine alliance, while addressing the virtual Global Vaccine Summit.
What the Prime Minister Highlighted during the Global Vaccine Summit?
- India shared the country’s available stocks of medicines (Hydro chloroquine and others) with over 120 countries.
- Mission Indradhanush aims to ensure full vaccination of the country’s children and pregnant women, including those in the remote parts of the vast nation.
- India has also added six new vaccines to its National Immunization Programme.
- Elaborated that India had digitized its entire vaccine supply line and developed an electronic vaccine intelligence network to monitor the integrity of its cold chain.
- India is also the World’s foremost producer of vaccines and that it is fortunate to contribute to the immunization of about 60 percent of the World’s children.
Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI)
- GAVI was created in 2000 as a successor to the Children’s Vaccine Initiative, which had been launched in 1990.
- GAVI is Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.
- The GAVI Alliance (formerly the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) is a global health partnership of public and private sector organizations dedicated to “immunisation for all”.
- GAVI’s strategy supports its mission to save children’s lives and protect people’s health by increasing access to immunisation in poor countries.
Intensified Mission Indradhanush (IMI) 2.0
- To boost the routine immunization coverage in the country, Government of India has introduced Intensified Mission Indradhanush 2.0 to ensure reaching the unreached with all available vaccines and accelerate the coverage of children and pregnant women in the identified districts and blocks from December 2019-March 2020.
- The IMI 2.0 aims to achieve targets of full immunization coverage in 272 districts in 27 States and at block level (652 blocks) in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar among hard-to-reach and tribal populations.
- With the launch of Intensified Mission Indradhanush 2.0, India has the opportunity to achieve further reductions in deaths among children under five years of age and achieve the Sustainable Development Goal of ending preventable child deaths by 2030.
