Kerala gears up to vaccinate 19.8 lakh children in Pulse Polio drive on June 28

Over 19 lakh children under the age of five years will be given oral polio drops in Kerala on June 28 as part of the nationwide Pulse Polio immunisation drive. Health Minister K. Muraleedharan will inaugurate the Statewide launch of the initiative at the Thycaud Mother and Child Hospital at 8 a.m. on Sunday.

A total of 19,80,224 children under five years of age will receive polio vaccine drops across the State. For this, 22,288 booths will be set up and 46,663 trained volunteers are being deployed to administer the vaccine. Vaccination booths will be opened at convenient public locations, including government hospitals, health centres, urban health centres, anganwadis, private hospitals, libraries, schools, and buildings of voluntary organisations.

In addition to regular booths, 539 transit vaccination booths will be set up to administer vaccines to children during travel, along with 283 mobile booths and nine booths at festivals and fairs. Transit booths will operate at railway stations, bus stands, and boat landings. Mobile booths are intended to reach people at locations such as migrant worker colonies, difficult terrain areas, festival grounds, and wedding halls.

Polio-free certification

The Pulse Polio drive was rolled out in India on October 2, 1994, when India accounted for around 60% of the global polio cases. The last case of polio due to the wild polio virus was reported in Kerala from Malappuram in 2000. No cases due to the wild virus have been reported in India since 2011. As of January 13, 2026, India has completed 15 years as a polio-free nation. India received a 'Polio-free certification' from the World Health Organisation (WHO), along with the entire South-East Asia Region on March 27, 2014.

According to the WHO, wild polio virus cases continue to be reported in Pakistan and Afghanistan and even if a single child remains infected, children in all countries are at risk of contracting polio. Failure to eradicate polio from these last remaining strongholds could result in as many as 2,00,000 new cases every year, within 10 years, all over the world, the WHO says.

Hence, one national polio immunisation day and two sub-national immunisation days are held in the country every year to maintain population immunity against the wild virus and thus maintain India's polio-free status. At the same time, injectable inactivated polio vaccine has been made part of the national immunisation schedule for providing routine immunisation cover to all children.

Cold chain

Banners, posters, leaflets will be distributed and house visits carried out as part of publicity for the programme. The Health department has made elaborate arrangements for vaccine delivery and cold chain maintenance — including ice-lined refrigerators, deep freezers, cold boxes, and vaccine carriers — have been arranged.

Children who do not reach the booths on Pulse Polio Day will be covered through mop-up rounds on June 29 and 30, when health workers will visit the houses of these children to administer the vaccine.