Digital way to track pregnant women, children for vaccination in Himachal

Shimla, Feb 5 (IANS) As a pilot project in Himachal Pradesh's Solan and Sirmaur districts, the government has launched U-WIN portal, a digital way to facilitate tracking every pregnant woman and children for vaccination.

Under the Centre-sponsored project, these districts have been included among the selected ones in the country.

The aim of the project is to increase the immunity of children and prevent them from various diseases.

Complete information about maternal and child vaccinations will be available on the portal.

Himachal Pradesh has an estimated target of vaccinating over one lakh new born babies and about 1.27 lakh pregnant women annually.

The portal has been developed on the lines of CoWIN portal. The data of all vaccination beneficiaries will be available on the portal from time to time after the birth of the child.

All government and private hospitals are also being linked with the U-WIN portal.

All the beneficiaries will get the information regarding their vaccination through SMS. The prominent feature of the portal is that after the completion of the vaccination process, the beneficiary will also get the vaccination certificate.

To get the beneficiary registered on the U-WIN portal, an Aadhaar card and mobile number will have to be provided at the vaccination centre.

The state government, through the Health Department, vaccinates children against diseases that mainly include rotavirus, tuberculosis, measles, whooping cough, tetanus, hepatitis-B, etc.

For the vaccination, there are 390 cold chains in the state. As a pilot project, 42 cold chains in Solan and Sirmaur districts will be covered under the U-WIN portal.

Currently, an estimated 43,000 beneficiaries will get benefits annually through the U-WIN portal.

An estimated 11,000 children in the age group of 0-1 year and 13,000 pregnant women in Solan district, while 9,100 children and 10,000 pregnant women in Sirmaur district will get benefit of the portal.