Government on Monday declared 2012 as the year for intensification of immunisation in the country by evolving strategies to reach out to children in remote and backward areas of the country, including slums.

With the present immunisation coverage of children being 61 per cent, the health ministry on Monday said 2012 will be the year of intensification of routine immunization to take the ratio to 100 percent.

A health ministry statement said "the key objective of this campaign is to improve full immunisation coverage and reach all children, particularly in remote, inaccessible and backward areas as well as in urban slums".

The ministry said this will be achieved through a special campaign for which strategies are being evolved, which include updating of micro plans to cover all villages and hamlets in the country, special immunisation drives in pockets of low immunisation coverage, intensification of immunisation activity by observing immunisation weeks in low-performing states and deployment of adequate number of health workers.

Prioritization of areas with exclusive strategy for 200 poor-performing districts will also be done with special focus on migrant and mobile populations.

Government said it has also expanded the Universal Immunization Programme (UIP) by introducing second dose of measles, Hepatitis B and Pentavalent vaccination.

The target is to vaccinate more than 12 crore children through Supplementary Immunization Activity (SIA) in 14 states, of whom 3.4 crore children have already been vaccinated, the health ministry said. This will prevent an estimated 1 lakh measles-related death.

Pentavalent, a combination vaccine against five diseases (Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenza B) has been introduced on a pilot basis in Tamil Nadu and Kerala in mid December 2011.

The initial response of the community has been very encouraging and more than one lakh children have been successfully vaccinated within the first month, the Ministry claimed.

In order to track every child for assured delivery of immunization services, a web-enabled name-based tracking system piloted by the health ministry has been put in place with a database of more than 10 million children.

Parents are being sent SMS alerts before the due date of vaccination and health workers are also receiving the list of children due for vaccination through SMS, the Minisry said, adding this is expected to improve immunization coverage substantially within the next one year and facilitate real- time reporting on immunization coverage.