Zubair Qureshi
Despite the fact that the vaccination drive was launched in Islamabad by no one else but Prime Minister Imran Khan himself on Feb 3, a large number of the frontline health workers of the federal capital are still reluctant to receive COVID-19 jabs and by Tuesday, only 700 of them were vaccinated.
According to the senior officials of the National health ministry, the federal capital had received 8,000 vaccine doses to administer to around 7,000 plus frontline health workers of the federal capital including doctors, paramedics, nurses and staff in various public sector hospitals and mobile teams of the District Health Office (DHO).
“We had estimated that from Feb 3 to Feb 15, we shall be able to vaccinate all the frontline health workers in the first phase of vaccination drive as we were tasked by the National Command & Operation Centre (NCOC) to do so but unfortunately, the doctors community and also the paramedics preferred to ‘wait and see’ instead of receiving jabs,” said a senior official of the Islamabad health department.
While there are 50,000 health workers vaccinated so far across the country, the number in the federal capital is still low and quite disturbing.
A senior doctor of the Pakistan Institute of medical sciences (PIMS) also confirmed that by Tuesday 371 health workers were vaccinated in the last thirteen days. On Feb 16, we vaccinated only 35 doctors and paramedics at the PIMS vaccination centre, said Dr Minhajur Siraj, Joint Executive Director of the PIMS.
The situation is not much different at the other vaccination centres, said a senior official of the District health office. Since the launch of the countrywide drive on Feb 3 and arrival of the Chinese vaccine shots at the five vaccination centres set up at Polyclinic, Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), CDA, Tarlai and Bhara Kahu, response by the doctors, nurses and paramedics is not quite encouraging.
Strangely, the campaign that is picking up in Karachi and rest of the country, is still quite slow and sluggish in the federal capital and according to some sources, one of the causes of this slow trend is that the health staff is feeling scared because of the negative propaganda attached to the provision and administration of vaccine.
