The newly launched U-WIN app could help India to overcome the limitation in keeping track of vaccination doses for children, Dr Mangesh Gadhari, UNICEF India health officer, told News18 in an exclusive interview.
"For decades, healthcare authorities and service providers have been facing the challenge of keeping track of the next dose of routine immunisation to children and also facing challenges with caregivers not bringing the maternal child protection (MCP) card during immunisation,” Gadhari said.
Therefore, the U-WIN app will help with booking slots and sending reminders before, as well as, on the due date, Gadhari said. "From booking slots, sending reminders before and on the due date to maintaining records and certificates (of the vaccination doses for children), it (the U-WIN app) made the entire process easy, trackable and smooth," he added.
The app will also help with the problem of intrastate, interstate, intradistrict or interdistrict migration of families as the vaccine acknowledgement and immunisation cards linked to ABHA ID (Ayushman Bharat Heath Account) can be accessed by all states and districts through a common database.
Besides, it will further help the country battle with the problem of ‘Missed Children’, also called ‘zero dose children’, who fail to receive even a single dose of vaccination. Meanwhile, there are approximately three lakh 'zero dose children' in India, as per the News18 report.
Gadhari added that he doesn’t foresee any major hiccups in the rollout of the app as there has been a lot of learning from the Co-WIN programme.
The Union health ministry launched the U-WIN app this year to digitise India’s universal vaccination programme. After the success of the CoWIN platform, the same concept has been replicated for the U-WIN app as well.
The pilot app has already been launched across the country and manual entry of data from the registers to software has started as well, according to the ministry. The U-WIN app aims to cater to 2.6 crore newborns and 2.9 crore pregnant women every year.
The issue of India’s 'Missed Children'
Gadhari said missed children are India’s big target for improving immunisation coverage since the launch of Mission Indradhanush in 2014-15. He explained that six phases of the ‘Mission Indradhanush (MI)’ and ‘Intensified Mission Indradhanush’ were completed in districts with low immunisation.
The first two phases helped increase full immunisation coverage by 6.5 percent and after six phases, there was an 18 percent improvement in full immunisation coverage according to the National Family Health Survey 5 (NFHS 5) over NFHS4.
He mentioned that other possible ways to reduce zero dose or missed children is through the micro-plans for routine immunisation at the village level, and by taking primary health care close to communities for better community participation.
He further emphasised that UNICEF will continue to support the Indian government’s immunisation programme to help achieve universal health coverage and accelerate sustainable development goals.
Gadhari said that India is focusing on digital health after the pandemic and it is an important step towards achieving the targets of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and health-related Sustainable Development Goal by 2030.
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