Mumbai: BMC to get NGOs to help expedite COVID-19 vaccination drive

A person gets vaccinated at Nair Hospital on Saturday. Pic/Ashish Raje

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will rope in NGOs to speed up the vaccination drive and reach out to as many people as possible. While many are still struggling to get themselves registered as they are not familiar with the online system, the BMC along with the NGOs, will reach out to such people by setting up camps for them. The first of the camps will start on Monday at Dharavi to reach out to the slum dwellers, and soon they will be held in other places.

As Municipal Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal has set a target of 45 days - 45 lakh for vaccinations, the BMC is taking various measures to achieve this by increasing the hospitals where the inoculation drive can be carried out.

The camps will have a help desk where queries related to the vaccine and the process will be answered along with a registration counter, and thus beneficiaries will be guided. The help desks and volunteers will also track those who have been vaccinated to follow up on them and their health, and educate them to not panic and get adverse effects treated. To avoid longer queues at the municipal-run centers, and to also increase the footfall at private hospitals, the BMC has been asking the latter to ensure that a daily target of 1,000 is met.

Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner, said, "We have roped in NGOs to help us reach out to as many eligible citizens as possible along with our employees. This exercise will start on Monday at Dharavi where citizens will get their queries resolved and also can seek help for registration along with follow ups post vaccination."

An urban health center at Dharavi will also start vaccination for eligible residents from Monday. The ward officials have appealed to people to get vaccinated and also asked the NGOs to come forward and help to maintain queues, registrations and solve any other problems at the centre.

More Covaxin doses arrive
After seeing a good response to Covaxin which was being administered from last Monday, the civic body had raised a demand of around 10 lakh vaccine doses from the government and a large consignment is expected early this week. The BMC has already started distributing Covaxin to the private hospitals added to the list of vaccination centres. The BMC has been appealing to citizens to not worry about which vaccine is better as both vaccines are similar and they should not have doubts. Over one lakh beneficiaries have been fully vaccinated by both vaccines so far.