Bokaro: The district health department has geared up to develop a new Cold Chain Point at ANM Centre closed to Sadar Hospital for storage of Covid-19 vaccines, which is expected to arrive in the last week of January 2020.
Civil surgeon, Bokaro, Dr Ashok Kumar Pathak said, the health department is all set to receive four Ice-Lined Refrigerators (ILR) and two deep freezers, specially for keepingCovid-19 vaccines. An ILR can maintain a temperature from +2°C to +8°C with as little as 8 hours of power supply in 24hours. “If the electricity supply fails, then the ice lining maintains the inside temperature of the refrigerator at a safe level for vaccines,” said Pathak.
At present, there are 11 ILR in the district, where vaccines for routine immunisation are being kept. Of these, eight ILR are in Primary Health Centres (PHC’s) in each of the eight blocks and two ILR’s are at Bermo and Chas Sub-Divisional hospitals and one at Sadar Hospitals. “In the existing ILR’s the routine immunisation vaccines of 11 different diseases are kept,” said the civil surgeon.
The new cold chain is coming up close to Sadar Hospital in the same building where Covid Care Centre is running these days. Besides, the health department is also working on mapping health professionals and frontline workers to whom the Covid vaccine will be administered in the first phase. Apart from them, the residents of above 50-years of age with comorbidities can get vaccine administered to them by submitted identity proof.
Civil surgeons said that there is a strict order that the vaccine cannot be administered to any person with identity proof. On Wednesday, a review meeting was held with the health department officials under the chairmanship of Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO), Chas, Shashi Prakash Singh, in the auditorium of Sadar Hospital.
Sources said that the meeting was regarding the preparations being made at the district and block level for Covid-19 vaccination. SDO directed the concerned officer to ensure proper identification of the immunization site, proper arrangement of maintenance of biomedical waste at the session site.
