Vaccination: Nodal officers appointed to monitor compliance with SOPs

KOLKATA: Urban Development and Municipal Affairs department has deployed nodal officers who will visit 37 Covid vaccination centres (CVCs) in private health establishments and 51 CVCs run by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) to monitor the quality issues and the compliance with the standard operating procedure (SoP) for the vaccination.

With an attempt to further strengthen the vaccination process the Urban Development and Municipal Affairs (UD & MA) department engaged two nodal officers who will examine whether the standard protocols are properly followed and the SoPs are maintained.

On the basis of their observations, the two nodal officers will submit reports to the department from time to time.

These two nodal officers ~ Dr Sunanda Basu and Dr Mausumi Saha. They have also been assigned the task to visit all the 51 health centres and borough offices which are run by the KMC. UD & MA department is coordinating the vaccination programme in urban local bodies with special focus on the KMC. An order was issued in this regard by the department on Saturday. "The nodal officers will undertake visits to the assigned facilities and monitor all qualitative and quantitative issues," reads the order. Dr Basu has been assigned to monitor 19 CVCs in private hospitals and 25 CVCs that are falling under the jurisdiction of the civic body.

Dr Saha, another nodal officer of UD & MA department will monitor 18 vaccination sites in the private hospitals and 26 centres of the KMC. It may be mentioned here that designated officers were earlier deputed in all the 37 CVCs in the city run by the private hospitals whose job is to smoothly implement the Covid vaccination programme.

Now, two nodal officers inducted into the programme will further boost up the vaccination drive.

Medical officers of all facilities functioning as CVCs have been asked to attend a review meeting and orientation session on adverse event following immunization (AEFI) on Monday which will be held at Subhanna Building in Salt Lake, Sector I.

The UD & MA department has already written to the Chief Executive Officers of all the CVCs in this regard.

The department is keen on ensuring that proper SoPs are followed during the immunization drive. The inoculation drive in Bengal has gathered momentum after Co-WIN app 2 started working better.

The state Health department has now been consistently carrying out over 1 lakh vaccinations per day. Around 23.75 lakh people have been vaccinated across the state till Saturday evening.