Bangladesh will start the widespread vaccination for children between the ages of 12 and 17 years on Monday, inoculating students from Motijheel Ideal School and College in Dhaka first.
The shots will be made available to school children at eight vaccination centres in the capital the following day, a year and a half into the pandemic. The students will be receiving doses of the Pfizer vaccine, reports bdnews24.com.
The younger children will have to register through the Surokkha web platform for the vaccine. The date and vaccination centre will then be confirmed to them through an SMS. Vaccine recipients will have to download, print out and bring their vaccination cards to the centre.
Health Minister Zahid Maleque and Education Minister Dipu Moni will launch the vaccination programme for school students, said Dr Shamsul Haque, the director of the vaccine programme at the Directorate General of Health Services, in a bulletin on Sunday.
Bangladesh is using the Pfizer vaccine for school students because it is approved by the World Health Organization for younger children.
According to the DGHS, the eight vaccine centres in Dhaka have been selected with the help of the Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board.
They are – The HURDCO School in the Bashundhara Residential Area, South Point School in Malibagh, Chittagong Grammar School in Gulshan, Ideal School and College in Motijheel, Dhaka Commerce College in Mirpur, Kakoli School in Dhanmondi, South Breeze School in Uttara and Scholastica School in Mirpur.
These institutions were chosen because they have air-conditioned rooms, which are required to dilute the Pfizer vaccine, Dr Shamsul Haque said.
Each of these centres will have 25 booths. Students from those schools and other nearby institutions will be able to get their shots.
“But no one will get a vaccine without registration. They must register and bring their vaccine cards to the centre,” Dr Shamsul said.
Preparations have been made to treat any children if they fall ill at Kurmitola General Hospital, the Central Police Hospital, the National Heart Foundation Hospital, Shaheed Suhrawardy Hospital and the Kuwait Bangladesh Friendship Government Hospital.
The government will expand the programme to 22 districts outside Dhaka.
In a test run on Oct 14, the authorities administered Pfizer doses to 120 students from several schools in Manikganj. None of the recipients showed any negative effects.
Bangladesh has received over 7 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, all of which came from the US through the COVAX programme. Another 3.5 million doses of the vaccine are to arrive in Bangladesh in November.
