LAHORE, March 30: Taking a serious note of some leading private school chain systems’ reluctance to get their students vaccinated against measles in the ongoing Punjab-wide campaign, the government has finally issued strict warning to them that if a ‘single student’ of their institutions contracts the disease, they will be held responsible for that and be liable to subsequent action.

The warning came in view of the ‘obduracy’ of some of the leading schools which are not ‘responding positively to the repeated calls’ of the health authorities for getting their students vaccinated against the disease since the launch of the campaign on March 17.

The Punjab and district governments, in collaboration with the WHO and Unicef, launched the campaign throughout the province, except Gujrat where the activity had been piloted last year. It will continue till April 3 with an aim to vaccinate about 35 million children aged between nine months and 13 years.

According to the health authorities, one of the prime reasons for launching such an ‘aggressive’ campaign is the fact that the virus of the disease has been prevailing and the children who will not be vaccinated against it will be at ‘high risk’ of contracting it.

City District Government of Lahore Executive District Officer (Health) Dr Inamul Haq told Dawn on Sunday that at least three private schools – The Lahore Grammar School, LACAS and The City Public School Systems – were not responding to the health authorities’ calls to allow the special teams to vaccinate their students. Some other leading private schools, he said, however, maintained that they were seeking consent of parents and by April 3 their students would be vaccinated.

“Owing to prevalence of the virus it is important for even those children, who had already been vaccinated, to get vaccinated again during the campaign,” he added.

Dr Haq said the CDGL had written to the Punjab governor, provincial health and education secretaries and sought their intervention. “The government has warned such schools that if a single student contracts the disease, their administrations will be held responsible and strict action will be taken against them,” he said, adding that the government would not spare those who would try to hamper such an important vaccination campaign. He further said the issue had underlined the need to take immediate steps to form a regulator authority to monitor the affairs of the private schools.

At least 21,000 children die of measles every year in the country. To make the campaign a success, the government has set up 76,000 vaccine points in the province and formed 12,000 teams for the purpose. Some 18,000 skilled and 40,000 non-skilled persons have been engaged throughout the province for the campaign.