Chattogram City: Vaccines arrive but training of health workers yet to start

A consignment of Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines have reached Chattogram city yesterday morning, as vaccination in the district is scheduled to start from February 7.

Thirty-eight cartons with 45,600 vials of vaccines reached the port city from Dhaka around 7am, Civil Surgeon Dr Sheikh Fazle Rabbi said. Each vial contains 10 doses of vaccine, he added, which means the total number of doses is 456,000.

The vaccines have been stored at the central storage in civil surgeon's office, maintaining temperature between 2 degree Celsius and 8 degree Celsius, the civil surgeon said. Those will be supplied to vaccination centres across the port city and 14 upazilas of the district.

The vaccination programme will be conducted in 15 centres in metropolitan areas -- including Chattogram Medical College Hospital and Chattogram General Hospital -- while there will be one centre in each of the 14 upazilas.

A total of 42 teams -- each comprising two nurses and four volunteers -- will conduct the vaccination programme in the city.

For the upazilas, two teams will operate vaccination programme in each centre, Dr Rabbi said, adding that the upazila health complexes will be used as vaccination centres.

A 14-member committee headed by the CMCH director has been formed to observe vaccine recipients' health condition, he said.

Meanwhile, training of health staffers who will operate the vaccination programme is yet to start in the metropolitan areas.

Asked why they could not start training, Dr Selim Alter Chowdhury, chief health officer of Chattogram City Corporation, said a complication arose due to the recently concluded CCC polls.

As the CCC mayor is the head of a committee formed to coordinate the vaccination programme, it may take a little bit of time before the newly-elected mayor can start working properly, he said. However, preparations are currently underway for the training sessions.

In addition, medical officials, including the civil surgeon and chief health officer, are yet to be informed about exactly how many people and who are to receive the vaccines for the initial phase.

"We asked all government, public and private hospitals to send us a list of their officials and staffers for vaccination," said Dr Rabbi. "Most of them sent the list, but I couldn't tell the exact number of recipients," he said. Dr Selim echoed the same.

As probable vaccine recipients are eagerly waiting for the programme to start, some of them told this correspondent they are worried to know the training is yet to start.

"I request the authorities to start the training programme as soon as possible as it's a matter of life and death," said a senior staff nurse of CMCH.

However, training for health officials who will conduct vaccination in the upazilas have started on Saturday, said the civil surgeon, adding that it will conclude tomorrow.