Mumbai: BMC to approach family docs, NGOs, pandals to speed up vaccination drive among children

To ramp up the snail-paced Covid-19 vaccination drive for the children aged between 12 to 14, the BMC is making concerted efforts to reach out to family physicians, school management as well as social organisations for speeding up the inoculation drive.

According to the CoWin portal, 44,479 children in the age group of 12-14 years have been vaccinated so far, which means only 11.11 per cent have received the Covid shots in Mumbai.

The civic body has also instructed the education department to submit the list of unvaccinated students in their wards. While, it has also been decided to set up vaccination camps near schools.

BMC executive health official, Dr Mangala Gomare, said they had conducted meetings with the education department and non-government organisations for a deeper penetration of vaccines among children.

“We have decided to reach each one of them in the city to organise awareness camps related to vaccines amongst the children and their parents. We have instructed Ganpati pandals, Dahihandi Utsav Mandal, MLAs and corporators to organise vaccine camps for their area children,” she said.

Dr Gomare further said they have also planned to roll in private or family doctors who will be able to counsel the children consulting them. “Family doctors would be involved in the vaccination drive to dispel the confusion among parents and children about vaccination,” she added.

Officials from the health department said the response to the drive has been lower than expected due to the dip in the daily Covid-19 cases. However, there are approximately 70,000 students, eligible for taking vaccines, in the BMC schools.

“Starting from collating the data of eligible students, creating awareness about vaccines and informing parents to even taking their consent for vaccination of their wards and then taking children to nearby vaccination centres, the schools were asked to take complete responsibility for vaccination of these children,” an official said.

Published on: Thursday, April 07, 2022, 11:54 PM IST