Note: How is it that even when vaccine injury is a apparent as an elephant in the room, the push continues to paint vaccines as always safe?  Parents are rightly afraid of the risk, especially in India where so many children were harmed, even killed. It's almost impossible to fathom. For those reading the complete report a "crore" is an Indian unit of 10m and the reference to "41 crore" is to India's 410m children between 1 and 15.

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By Jyoti Pandey, DownToEarth.org

After Gujarat and Punjab, now Uttar Pradesh has lost two children to Measles-Rubella vaccination and several other schoolchildren have fallen sick in Pilibhit and Shahjahanpur districts.

School administrations are now so scared to organise such drives that the government has sought help from the Indian Medical Association to spread awareness among people.

The vaccination drive was launched in UP on January 26 and the same day several cases of children falling sick were reported from various parts of the state. While Kanpur saw admission of 100 school-going children in hospitals, Shahjahanpur reported 30 such cases, Lakhimpur Kheri 22, Mainpuri 12, Unnao 29, Firozabad four and Mahoba and Tundla reported eight cases each.

After both Pilibhit and Shahjahanpur lost one kid each, the health department went into a tizzy. Zainab, 12, a resident of Chandoi village in Pilibhit, fell sick the day after she got vaccinated. She was admitted to a hospital right after she started puking, but she died.

Similarly, Shahjahanpur's Chandpur village saw eight-year-old Prince fall ill two and a half hours after he got the vaccine. He also started puking and the same night he was declared dead, says his father Sudhir Dikshit.

Earlier, Punjab had also witnessed a girl die and several other fall sick. After the death in Bhatinda, the vaccination drive was halted. Even in Gujarat, the kin of the two schoolchildren who died blamed the vaccine for the deaths. The protests forced the state government to launch an investigation.  Read more here.