Mumbai: BMC starts mass-training drive for COVID-19 vaccine delivery

Senior medical officers get trained to give COVID-19 vaccine at Dadar on Monday. Pic/Ashish Raje

As it anticipates a mammoth programme to inoculate people against COVID-19 in coming months, the BMC has drawn up an elaborate plan to train medical officials for the drive.

In the first phase, it got eight senior officials trained on vaccination. They have now begun sharing their knowledge to the second line of health officials, including staff from medical colleges, peripheral hospitals and special hospitals, senior medical officers of dispensaries and assistant medical officers of BMC's EPI cell.

In the past three days, 70-80 such officials, called master trainers, were trained, said sources. These master trainers will have to further train their colleagues by January 7. About 1.26 lakh healthcare workers will be the first to get the vaccine for which the civic body has identified hospitals like KEM, Sion, Nair, Cooper, Bhabha, V. N. Desai, Rajawadi and BDBA.

Each of these centres will have to finalise three to five vaccination sites on their premises. A team of five will manage each of these sites. The corporation also plans to include cardiologists, nephrologists, and respiratory medicine specialists in its team for management of adverse reaction following immunisation.

The next lot of people to be vaccinated will comprise sanitation workers, frontline engineers, drivers, BEST staff and those working in cemeteries. Their data will be uploaded on the CoWIN portal, a digital platform set up by the Union government for real-time monitoring of COVID vaccine delivery, by December 25, said officials.

BMC is developing an ‘ideal' vaccination centre at Cooper Hospital to help others replicate the model. It has identified 5,000 sq ft space at Kanjurmarg to store vaccines. This store will have powerful freezers to keep vaccines at very low temperatures - between -15 and -250 degree Celsius.

Seventeen ice-lined refrigerators of 225 litres capacity have been supplied by the state government for the storage purpose. Of these, eight have been delivered to the eight vaccination centres - 4 medical colleges and 4 peripheral hospitals.