Response of Various Stakeholders towards Newly Introduced Japanese Encephalitis Vaccine in a North Indian State

Introduction. Many attempts had been made to introduce newer vaccines into national immunization schedule of India. Special vaccines campaigns for diseases like JE were also initiated, which required a lot of preparation before vaccinating the beneficiaries. Objectives. To ascertain response of various stakeholders regarding launch of Japanese encephalitis vaccination campaign by state government in district Ambala, Haryana. Methodology. A 30-cluster survey was done to assess the vaccine coverage and views of the stakeholders. Various officials of state health services were also interviewed. Results. JE vaccine coverage was found to be 93.9%. Majority (59.8%) of the parents were informed about JE vaccination by the health worker. Many (83; 41.7%) parents said that they got their child vaccinated for JE since it “endangers life of children” and 82 (41.2%) said that “since everybody got it.” All the staff was trained for JE vaccination campaign. Conclusion. JE vaccination campaign was a success with adequate preparation. Majority of people accepted vaccine in good faith in the government rather than due to their knowledge about disease. 1. Introduction Importance of vaccines for communicable disease control was conclusively established with eradication of smallpox in 1980. The Government of India had a national immunization schedule through which children were getting vaccines for tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and measles. Some states also included additional vaccines like hepatitis B in the schedule. Many of the newer vaccines were, however, available in private sector, for example, chickenpox, typhoid, hepatitis A, pentavalent vaccine (diphtheria, tuberculosis, tetanus, hepatitis B, and Hemophilus influenza B), and so forth. The JE vaccine was being used sporadically in India in limited areas since the 1970s. In India, there is a rise of JE incidence and the outbreaks have occurred in 25 states. The majority have been reported from the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Kerala, West Bengal, Orissa, and Union territories of Goa and Pondicherry. JE was reported as an outbreak in the studied state; a serologically confirmed epidemic was reported in the studied area which had affected 182 patients (88.0% were children) with mortality rate of 65.0% [1]. However, large-scale special JE vaccination campaign was initiated in 2006 in the states of Assam (coverage 82.76%), Karnataka (coverage 82.67%), West Bengal (coverage 56.12%), and Uttar