Organization background
Children International (CI) has been working in various districts of West Bengal, India, since 1981. CI programs reached out to several tens of thousands of underprivileged children with the goal of enabling them to become "healthy, educated and self-reliant" adults. They have a local agency "Sahay", and also work with UNICEF as well as several NGO's and governmental agencies in India.

Project background
CI places special emphasis on providing health care, and vaccinations are an important component of health care. Though the Indian government provides some of these vaccinations through a Primary Immunization Schedule, till 2007, this schedule did not include a Hepatitis B vaccine. Therefore several children born before 2007 have not had the immunization (because of the expense). As this is a disease that has no cure and is often fatal, CI has been providing Hepatitis B vaccinations to more and more of their sponsored children.

Project description
The project proposal is to provide Hepatitis B vaccination, as a preventive measure, for 1859 sponsored children and youth in two communities of the 24 Parganas(S) district of West Bengal, India. Three doses will be provided over a course of three months. CI will also increase awareness and understanding of Hepatitis B by giving informational talks to all children receiving the vaccination as well as their family and community members. The vaccines will be procured by a competitive bidding process by inviting quotations from pharmaceutical companies that produce it. GKF will pick up about 80% of the cost of this project.

Close window