LAHORE, March 20: The administrations of leading private schools in Lahore have refused to get their students vaccinated against measles.

The Punjab and district governments, in collaboration with the WHO and Unicef, launched an aggressive anti-measles campaign on March 17 across the province, except Gujrat where the activity had been piloted last year. The campaign will continue till April 3.

City District Government of Lahore Executive District Officer (Health) Dr Inamul Haq told Dawn on Thursday that the government had been facing problems in achieving its target because the administrations of private schools, especially leading chain systems, had refused to get their students vaccinated against the disease.

“This is very unfortunate as thousands of children may not be vaccinated owing to stubbornness of the private schools’ administrations.

Every (private) school in the city has on its roll about 2,000 children,” he said and added that this attitude would also leave a bad impression on the visiting representatives of the WHO and Unicef.

Dr Haq further said the CDGL had taken the administrations of the private schools into confidence a month before the launch of the campaign. “At that time none of the private schools had expressed reservations about it. Now they are saying that they need to take permission from the parents and wards. This is tantamount to hampering the otherwise successful campaign in the province,” he added.

He said he would bring the matter into the knowledge of the provincial chief and health secretaries to press the private schools’ administrations to cooperate with the vaccinators for the purpose. He said arrangements had been made to hold vaccination camps on results day for children who were not attending their schools because of their academic session closure.

Answering a question as why the government felt the need for launching the anti-measles campaign when this vaccine was already included in seven vaccine-preventable diseases like Childhood Tuberculosis, Poliomyelitis, Diphtheria, Pertussis, Neonatal tetanus and Hepatitis-B, Dr Inamul Haq replied that some 21,000 children died of measles every year and vaccine cover was only 63 per cent of the total population in the country.

This campaign aimed at covering the total population of the children aged between nine months and 13 years, he said.

According to the target set for the campaign, about 35 million children between nine months and 13 years would be administered anti-measles vaccine.

As many as 76,000 vaccine points have been set up in the province besides 12,000 teams constituted in this regard. Some 18,000 skilled and 40,000 non-skilled persons have been engaged throughout the province in the campaign.

Nine cold rooms at provincial level are functioning for storage of measles vaccine whereas cold rooms at district and tehsil levels have been set up for the storage of the vaccine.

Meanwhile, the health department has directed that eight ice packs should be supplied to each vaccination team and new vaccine carriers should be utilised wherever available. Ice packs should be used instead of ice because diluents get infected when stored in ice and syringes after use must be stored in safety boxes which should be burnt and the remains of the burnt boxes to be buried.