After the rural areas, the state government for the first time will be conducting the drive in 11 cities for children upto 5 years.

This comes after a recent report published by the Ministry of Health indicated that the intake of the supplement among the urban children was only 8.7 per cent, much lower than the national average — 25 per cent.

The supplement is usually given to children during routine immunisation. But the state launches the special one month drive in every six months following large number of children suffering from Vitamin A deficiency.

The experts regard low Vitamin A intake as one of the important factors behind the state children being regularly attacked by all kinds of diseases.

“During the drive, largescale awareness campaigns will be conducted across the state in the selected urban slums, so that even parents realise the importance of Vitamin A supplement for their children,” said an expert from UNICEF, who is associated with the immunisation programme in the state for the last three years.

“We understand that there is a lot more that needs to be done in terms of increasing the intake of Vitamin A among the rural and urban children of the state,” said Rajeev Kapoor, Mission Director of National Rural Health Mission.

Kapoor admitted that the there were certain fallacies that occurred in the previous drive in June. The Vitamin A doses have been procured before hand to ensure that the drive is successful, said Kapoor.