On January 16, 2020 India will commence what is being called the ‘biggest vaccination programme in the world’ as the country begins the rollout of COVID19 vaccines to 30 million [3 crore] health and frontline workers. As the first tranche of vaccines begin to reach states and union territories, governments and health officials have been readying systems and infrastructure to ensure a glitch-free rollout of these vaccines.
As across the world, in India too, the World Health Organization has been supporting the government in its fight against the pandemic. With India granting emergency use authorization to COVID-19 vaccines, WHO is supporting the government to train and prepare the health workforce who will be administering the vaccines.
WHO India supported the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) to put in place standard operational guidelines for vaccine introduction. The trainings were conducted through virtual platforms at national and state levels, while a mix of virtual and face to face trainings was conducted at the district and sub-district levels. The materials used in these trainings also included animated films in different languages to ensure ease of understanding.
The trainings were further monitored not just by WHO field staff but also in real time through a dashboard created especially for this, which also helped to integrate feedback.
So far WHO has supported the Government of India for cascaded trainings for nearly 250,000 vaccinators and 440,000 lakh vaccination officers across the country.
‘Safe and effective vaccines will be a gamechanger. Not only will vaccines help save lives and stabilize health systems, but help to drive economic recovery.’ said Dr Roderico Ofrin, WHO Representative, India.
As India begins it COVID 19 vaccination rollout, the first beneficiaries will be health care and frontline workers followed by high-risk populations.