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Naidu briefs Gates on AP's healthcare initiatives

Syed Amin Jafri in Hyderabad

Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu briefed Microsoft chairman Bill Gates on the initiatives taken by Andhra Pradesh in e-governance, immunisation and AIDS control.

Naidu had a brief half-an-hour one-to-one meeting with Bill Gates at his chambers in Jubilee Hall in hyderabad, where he gave an overview of the activities in these key areas of governance, health and medicare, official sources said.

Later, addressing the round-table on immunisation, Naidu assured Bill Gates that the immunisation programme in the state would continue to receive his personal attention. "I will make this project as real partnership model between my government and Gates Foundation," he said.

"We are honoured to welcome Bill Gates to Andhra Pradesh. Today, we are happy to share with you our immunisation success stories but I also want the people here to tell us about the biggest constraints for reaching our goal of increasing our immunisation coverage," he told the visiting Microsoft chief and thanked him for the generous support to the project that makes a tremendous difference to the children of Andhra Pradesh.

The hour-long round-table was attended by Bill Gates, officials from Child Vaccine Project and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, AP government health officials, district collectors of six districts where second-phase of Hepatitis B vaccine programme was launched, representatives of four vaccine-producing pharma companies, besides health minister Dr Kodela Siva Prasada Rao, Unicef country representative Maria Calvis, and editors N Ravi (The Hindu), Dilip Padgoankar (Times of India) and Ramoji Rao (Eenadu).

Naidu said AP has focused its efforts in ensuring child survival. It has set an ambitious goal to achieve reduction in infant mortality rate from the present 65 per 1,000 births to 15 per 1,000 births in 2020. "One of the important interventions in achieving the goal is to strengthen the universal immunisation programme. Success so far has been limited with the percentage of fully immunised children increasing from 45 per cent in 1992-93 to only 58.7 per cent in 1998-99," he explained.

He said special focus on polio eradication yielded results with no case of wild-virus polio reported since December 1999. It was at this juncture that support was extended by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for strengthening the immunisation services and promoting safe injection practices and compiling the name-based registry for tracking the immunisation of every infant.

"Andhra Pradesh is the first state in India, barring Delhi, to offer Hepatitis-B vaccine, free of cost, to all its children. In the past year, at least 300,000 children in six districts have been immunised against Hepatitis-B.

Andhra Pradesh is also the first state in the country to use auto-disable syringes for all immunisation injections, as part of a larger injection safety effort. We are the first state to procure Japanese encephalitis vaccine internationally and provide it to children in high-risk areas in the state," he explained.

"The state has started sharing the costs of the project from this year and even after the project ends, this will continue as our own programme," he said and pointed out that the state has shared its experiences and lessons with Government of India to support their immunisation-strengthening efforts through Global Alliance of Vaccines and Immunisation project. "The lessons we have learned by introducing auto-disable syringes and Hepatitis-B vaccine have been shared with the Government of India," he observed.

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