GUWAHATI, Jan 4 - The State government will start an adult vaccination drive to prevent spread of Japanese encephalitis (JE) in Assam from the last part of the current month, said a senior official of the State health department.
The step to start the vaccination drive has been taken by the government after JE and acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) took a disastrous form last year across the State.
According to the official, in the preliminary stage the vaccination drive is likely to start from Goalpara district, to be followed by South Salmara and Kokrajhar.
In 2019 altogether 89 AES cases and 34 JE cases were reported in Goalpara district. While AES claimed the lives of 21 people, JE claimed 13 lives in that district.
The official said that the department will use Jenvac vaccine during the drive. Jenvac is a locally produced JE vaccine available in India. It is noteworthy that, whether it is locally manufactured or imported from a foreign country, scarcity of JE vaccine always persists in the market due to various technical reasons. So the State government is planning to carry out the vaccination drive in a phased manner.
To carry out the drive, teams of the health department will camp in both rural and urban areas and a certain procedure will be followed during the vaccination drive.
�We have almost completed all arrangements to start the drive. Still, there will be many challenges in the field. We will take all possible measures to overcome these challenges,� the senior official said.
In 2019, altogether 2,652 cases of AES were reported across the State with 353 of those resulting in death. The highest number of 601 cases was reported in Dibrugarh district, followed by Kamrup Metro (241) and Lakhimpur (167) districts.
The number of JE cases reported in 2019 was 641 with 161 of those resulting in death. Last year, the highest cases of JE were reported in Lakhimpur (50), followed by Nagaon (45) and Sivasagar (45) districts.