The DEO issued the warning at the request of the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP). [break]
Officials at Child Health Division (CHD) have requested the DEO to take action against private schools, including some renowned ones that barred government deployed vaccinators from entering their schools.
"I personally phoned the schools and directed them to cooperate with health workers," said Baikuntha Prasad Aryal, chief of Kathmandu DEO. Aryal said that the DEO has also deployed its employees at the schools that had refused to let health workers in.
Schools like Rato Bangla, Little Angles, Galaxy, Daffodil, Florescent, Brihaspati, Chand Bagh etc., have been denying entry to the health officials, the CHD said.
The schools have questioned the reliability of vaccine that is being used all over the country under the government campaign to immunize children.
Following DEO´s warning, many private schools have called asking vaccinators be sent to their schools, the District Public Health Office (DPHO) Kathmandu said. The Kathmandu DPHO said that they have successfully immunized students of Brihaspati Vidhya Sadan on Friday, one of the schools that barred health workers earlier.
Galaxy School has asked the vaccinators to be sent on December 24. "They told us to set camp outside the school where children who wish to get immunized can get the vaccines," Mahendra Prasad Shrestha, Chief of DPHO, Kathmandu said.
The Kathmandu DPHO said that out of 416,000 children in the metropolis over more than 200,000 received vaccine. DPHO plans to immunize about 658,800 children in the month-long campaign in Kathmandu district alone.
About 5.7 million children aged 9 months to 15 years in the Central and Eastern Regions are being administered measles and rubella (MR) vaccines in the third phase of the campaign that kicked off on December 14.
CHD has requested everybody to cooperate with health officials in immunizing their children. The MoHP aims to eliminate the diseases by 2015 to meet one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
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