Concerted efforts for successful mass vaccination campaign stressed

Concerted efforts of all the government and non-government organisations concerned are seen very much effective to make the mass vaccination campaign against Covid-19 successful, even in the remote and hard-to-reach areas.

“We have seen that the opening day of the mass vaccination campaign on August 7 last was very much successful everywhere in the district,” said Dr Quiume Talukder, Civil Surgeon of Rajshahi.

He said the mass vaccination campaign opened a new opportunity for the grassroots people to protect them from the deadly virus.

Side by side with government agencies, many of the non-government organisations are working together to create public awareness so that they can protect them from the virus infection.

“We’re working for adequate knowledge transfer among the village people for making them capable of stemming the virus infection,” said Tozammel Haque, manager of Public Health Improvement Initiative Rajshahi (PHIIR) Project.

DASCOH Foundation and Swiss Red Cross are jointly implementing the PHIIR project in 110 community clinics, 42 Union Health and Family Welfare Centres and five Upazila Health Complexes in Rajshahi and Naogaon districts in order to improve health status at primary health care and mother, neonatal and child health.

On behalf of the PHIIR project, 47 staff, including 47 community volunteers and four family welfare visitors, are working together to make the rural level mass vaccination campaign a total success, he added.

They are assisting the village people in NID card collection, vaccine register update, supply of token for registration, filling up vaccine card and helping service providers for injecting vaccine.

There are some other supporting works, including crowd controlling in vaccination centres, raising awareness regarding vaccination, registration and verification and providing the next vaccination date to the respective person who received the first dose vaccine.