Delhi begins vaccination training for 3,500 healthcare workers

Date: 17/12/2020

As India waits for the mass rollout of a coronavirus vaccine, preparations are already underway to coach healthcare workers who are going to be administering vaccine shots to people after it's available. In Delhi, a huge training drive has begun for 3,500 healthcare workers.

Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC) has selected 3 doctors as ‘vaccinating officers’. they're going to train more vaccinating officers, who will then pass it on to other district-level healthcare workers within the capital .

“They will receive training then train vaccinators at the district level in Delhi. MAMC is that the largest medical college with a crucial role to send vaccinating officers,” said Dr Pragya Sharma, head of community medicine at MAMC.

Any training programme is successful if we've a robust training plan. it's talking from the macro to micro level, said Dr Suneela Garg, public health expert and advisor to the ICMR. She has also been appointed within the state covid19 task force on vaccination programme in Delhi.

“We are educating people, and creating a typical module. we've 609 cold chain points in Delhi where the vaccination goes to require place. For that we've to coach a huge amount of manpower, a minimum of 1.5 lakh at the central level and three ,500 vaccinators for the Delhi state and district level,” she added.

It may be noted that a team of 6 vaccinating officers are going to be watching the whole exercise at every cold chain point. The cold chain point will need a minimum of 3 rooms.

A first-level officer will verify an individual , a second-level officer will see documents, a third-level officer will see crowd management and a fourth-level officer will track adverse event for a minimum of half an hour.

Two vaccinating officers will directly inoculate the person. An overall in-charge also will be monitoring the general programme.

Of the 3,500 vaccinating officers, 1,800 are going to be direct workers in teams of 4. As mentioned above, 600 healthcare workers are going to be supervisors at the cold chain points, 600 medical staff are going to be from the private sector, 200 medical staff at cold chain points within Cantonment zones (army and railway colonies, (PSUs) and 300 medical staff from various dispensaries.

The training sessions are going to be interactive and methodologies like presentations, instructive videos, role-plays, exercises and interactive discussions are going to be used. within the training, vaccine officers are going to be apprised about vaccine safety, line-listing of beneficiaries, monitoring, vaccine logistics management and use of digital application CoWin.

According to the central government's latest guidelines, health care personnel, including state and district programme managers, medical officers, vaccinator officers, information, education and communication officers, cold chain handlers, supervisors, data managers, ASHA workers, and Mahila Arogya Samitis are going to be engaged within the vaccination process through cascaded training.

As per the Delhi government, 1.8 lakh to 2.25 lakh healthcare workers are going to be vaccinated within the first phase of the drive.