India’s immunisation journey marked by verified milestones

New Delhi, March 17 :From eradicating smallpox in 1977 to eliminating polio and neonatal tetanus, administering 200 crore COVID-19 doses, and now pursuing Measles-Rubella elimination — India's immunisation journey is one of verified, milestone-by-milestone achievement, an official fact-sheet said on Tuesday.

India has eradicated smallpox, polio and maternal and neonatal tetanus through vaccination, and continues to expand its immunisation programme — most recently launched HPV and indigenous Td vaccines in 2026.

India’s robust Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP), a wide-spread network of publicly funded healthcare centres, workers and cold-chain infrastructure, and a strong digital network, have delivered results.

“The UIP is one of the world's largest immunisation programmes, reaching 2.9 crore pregnant women and 2.54 crore newborns every year, free of cost. Full immunisation coverage has risen from 62 per cent in 2015 to 98.4 per cent in January 2026,” the fact-sheet said.

Percentage of zero-dose children to the total population has declined from 0.11 per cent in 2023 to 0.06 per cent in 2024.

In the past decade, various new vaccines were added to the programme – Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) (2015), Rotavirus Vaccine (RVV) (2016), Measles-Rubella (MR) vaccine (2017) and Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) (2017).

A nationwide Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination campaign was launched on February 28, 2026. The campaign was launched from Ajmer, Rajasthan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

It targets 14-year-old girls to protect them from cervical cancer. Around 1.15 crore girls across India are expected to receive the vaccine free of cost at government health facilities.

India's vaccine cold chain is one of the largest in the world — spanning nearly 30,000 cold chain points, from Government Medical Supply Depots at the national level down to Primary Health Centres at the sub-district level.

According to the statement, these storage points at hospitals, community health centres, primary health centres and other health facilities are equipped with over 1.06 lakh ice-lined refrigerators and deep freezers, and 432 walk-in cooler and walk-in freezers for bulk vaccine storage.

Conducting over 1.3 crore immunisation sessions annually across this network, maintaining temperature integrity at every point is critical to ensuring vaccines reach the last beneficiary in potent condition, the statement added.

--IANS