Lucknow, March 3 (IANS): The Uttar Pradesh government has vaccinated 96 per cent of the target children, according to the data from the Hospital Information Management System by the UP health and family welfare department.

Against a target of vaccinating 42,93,472 children below 12 years in the financial year 2023-24, the state has already covered 41,41,003 children.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has expressed satisfaction over the steps taken by the state government to improve immunisation coverage and lauded the best performing districts, said a government spokesman.

The chief minister also pulled the poor performing districts, including Lalitpur, Siddharthnagar, Bhadohi, Jalaun, and Sonbhadra where vaccination rate was between 69.51 per cent and 81.14 per cent.

An official spokesperson said that at least 20 districts of the state have achieved cent per cent of the target between April and December last year. The numbers will go up since there is still time left before the deadline ends on March 31.

Top five districts include Gautam Buddha Nagar, Ghaziabad, Amroha, Mau and Saharanpur.

Officials said that a strike rate of more than 90 per cent is considered good enough so far as implementation of the national programme is concerned.

Directives have been issued to meticulously document the data of dropouts and out-of-school children, the officials said, adding that numbers show that 100 per cent children in this category were covered.

A closer look at the data revealed that the coverage for Hepatitis B (birth dose) was 71.21 per cent while that for measles and rubella was 93.87 per cent. In TD-10 (tetanus and diphtheria) category, the achievement was nearly 99.6 per cent.

Data also showed that as many as 29,44,433 children were born in the state between April and December 2023, of whom 27,85,207 babies were delivered at the government centres.

Among them, 19,83,224 infants received Hepatitis B birth dose, while the remaining were exempted for various reasons, prompting inquiries into the matter.