“It is not compulsory to get registered on the U-WIN platform for pregnant women and newborn babies to access vaccination facilities,” the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) said on March 15 in response to MediaNama’s Right to Information (RTI) queries. The RTI, filed on February 8, inquired about the Indian government’s pilot project to digitize vaccination records under a CoWin-like platform called ‘U-WIN’. Stating that the move is not mandatory yet, the Ministry further said that: “However, every pregnant women and child is encouraged to register in U-WIN platform. This will help in tracing vaccination status of the beneficiary. U-WIN portal will issue a digital vaccination certificate which will be readily available for future reference.” What is U-WIN? The government is planning to digitize Universal Immunization Programme (UIP) through the U-WIN portal, which is expected to be a “one-stop source for all information on a mother and child’s immunization process”. Once fully implemented, it will maintain and track records of pregnant women, their delivery outcomes, vaccination status and plans of routine immunization sessions, on a “real-time” basis. According to the RTI response, the "soft pilot of the project" was carried out in two districts from every State and Union Territory (UT) on January 11, 2023. In February, we had written about an Economic Times report on Himachal Pradesh government’s decision to implement all state vaccination programmes through the U-WIN portal. The state government’s move suggests that on ground, people will have no option but to register on the…
