Projects

The project focuses on strengthening India's efforts to eradicate polio. Catholic Relief Services and GEAG worked together on strategies to make the routine immunisation programme more acceptable among people who had been resisting it.

• The project aimed to improve coordination amongst frontline workers like ASHA, Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM), Anganwadi Worker (AWW), and Community Mobilisation Coordinator (CMC) for improving both vaccination coverage during routine immunisation and supplemental polio immunisation in their respective areas.
• Influencers' meetings were held to engage them in motivating the communities to improve the coverage of supplementary immunisation.
• The interpersonal communication sessions were held with caretakers (0–5-year-old children and pregnant mothers) for childhood immunisation on a regular basis.
• Group meetings were organised with parents, the community, and adolescent children once or twice a month to enable participants to adopt positive behaviours on immunisation, breastfeeding, diarrhoea prevention, management, and improved hygiene.

• Increase in both routine immunisation coverage and booth coverage.
• The quality of mothers' meetings improved over the period.
• Reduction in the number of families who were openly resistant and non-cooperative and had been refusing the vaccine through health camps.
• A substantial decrease in the number of missed houses and missed children.