The government has decided to vaccinate the residents of slums, with the dwellers of Korail in Dhaka to receive the first shots under the programme on Tuesday.
The campaign will be expanded to other slums in the capital and elsewhere in Bangladesh, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said at an event in Dhaka on Monday.
Korail is the largest slum in Dhaka with more than 300,000 residents, according to the minister. The government will use the shots from China’s Sinopharm to inoculate them.
The slum dwellers must register first for the vaccine. The registration will be done on the spot by using their national ID card or birth certificate, reports bdnews24.com.
If they cannot bring the documents, they will be registered through “line listing”, said Dr Shamsul Haque, head of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation at the Directorate General of Health Services.
The programme aims to immunise the citizens who missed the vaccination during mass inoculation drives, according to him.
The event was organised to mark the receipt of four freezer vans to transport vaccines from the US.
The health minister said the US pledged a total of 14 freezer vans to transport Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that need to be stored at -70 degrees Celsius.
