By Rita Joseph

New Delhi: Persistent and widespread rumors have put the brakes on the vaccination drive against measles and rubella. After the completion of the ongoing first phase the drive will be temporarily halted, according to a Health Ministry official.

Dr Pradeep Haldar, Deputy Commissioner (Immunisation), Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, said “the campaign would be temporarily halted till an effective media strategy is put in place to counter false propaganda.”

It would take 2-3 months to “rework” media strategy and “replan” the exercise, he said.

However, the campaign to immunise 410 million children, between nine months and 15 years of age, across the country will be completed by March 2018, he said.

Dr Haldar said the scale of rumours was unprecedented this time around. “It has been a learning experience for us. Every day we had to devise new strategies to counter fresh rumours.”

He said the first phase of the campaign in three states – Goa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu – and two union territories – Puducherry and Lakshwadweep – is almost nearing completion and should be over by the month end.

A total of 35 million children were set to be administered the MR-VAC, a single dose to fight against the twin diseases of measles and rubella, in the first phase that kickstarted on February 7 two days after the formal launch at Bengaluru. The entire exercise was scheduled to end by March 1.

However, fake alerts and rumours threw a spanner on the government’s effort to eradicate the twin diseases by 2020.

Social media, messenger applications and even some television channels have been rife with false propaganda against the drive.

Initially, rumours on Facebook and Whatsapp claimed the vaccination was rejected abroad and sent to India and that Indian children were being used as guinea pigs. Some messages said it was “slow poison.”

While others on social media and doctored tapes on some television channels claimed the vaccine would render children impotent and that it was aimed at children of minorities.

Some miscreants even dubbed MR-VAC vaccine as Modi-RSS vaccine.

The false propaganda gained currency when the rumour mongers referred to Union Home Minister Kiren Rijiju’s controversial statement that Hindu population count was falling.

To lend authenticity to their claims, those spreading rumours even roped in a retired paediatrician to denounce the vaccine on a television channel, the Health Ministry official said.

Dr Pankaj Bhatnagar, WHO’s National Project Officer for Immunisation (India) said there is no basis to these rumours. The vaccination is for children of all communities and no one is being singled out.

He said the Pune-based Serum Institute of India is the only manufacturer of the vaccine thus far in the world and that it is exported to over 100 countries. It is entirely wrong to say that it was rejected abroad.

UNICEF and WHO officials have been counselling parents and other stakeholders. “We have collaborated with community leaders, celebrities and recently immunised children and taken their help in spreading awareness,” he said.

On hindsight, the WHO official added, “we feel we should have better used social media for awareness campaign. There are 70 pecent people with android phones in the country.”

Puducherry suffered a setback on the first day itself as 33 children complained of vomiting after the vaccination. As a safety measure, they were hospitalised for observation. It was just “anxiety reaction” and nothing to do with the vaccine, he said.

However, this slowed down the process in the union territory which is lagging behind.

“We also faced stiff resistance from some elitist schools and parents in Bengaluru but after some counselling vaccination picked up there, said Dr Haldar.

Infection is high among children in the age group of nine months to 15 years, this particular age group is being targeted, the Health Ministry official said.

By protecting the age group, the disease can be tackled effectively. Every child, irrespective of previous vaccination history, has to be immunised to achieve herd immunity. Thus India will be able to eradicate the scourge of these diseases like polio by 2020.

The introduction of the second dose of the measles vaccine and an increase in vaccine coverage have led to a sharp decline in deaths in India — from an estimated 1,00,000 deaths in 2010 to 47,000 in 2015, he said.

Measles is highly infectious and is one of the major childhood killer diseases. It can render a child vulnerable to life-threatening complications such as pneumonia, diarrhoea and brain infection. In 2015 alone, 49,200 children died of measles, according to Healthy Ministry data.

On the other hand, rubella, commonly known as German Measles, though often mild in virulence, can lead to severe complications when pregnant women are infected. These complications can include foetal death and congenital rubella syndrome (CRS) that can compromise hearing, sight, cardiovascular and endocrine health.

Each year, more than 200,000 children in India are born deaf, blind or with heart or brain damage due to congenital rubella.

It is easily preventable. But there is no known cure for the disease, said Dr Haldar.