Vaccination drive to combat Japanese Encephalitis begins in UP

Lucknow, June 14 (ANI): A special vaccination drive begins on Monday against Japanese Encephalitis in Uttar Pradesh.

The vaccination will be conducted in four severely hit districts of Gorakhpur, Deoria, Kushinagar and Maharajganj.

According to official sources, the state government had demanded about 74 lakhs dozes of vaccines from Centre to conduct the vaccination drive in 21 blocks of all districts of Basti and Gorakhpur divisions.

The immunization drive was supposed to start from June 1. However, there were only 200,000 vaccines available against the demand of 362,000, leading the State government to select only some blocks in the district, leaving out a large number of children to remain unvaccinated.

The first encephalitis vaccination campaign had taken place in Gorakhpur in 2006, but there was a gap of four years before the second drive was launched in 2010.

Japanese Encephalitis previously known as Japanese B Encephalitis to distinguish it from von Economo's A Encephalitis is a disease caused by the mosquito-borne Japanese Encephalitis virus. (ANI)