DHAKA — Health and Family Welfare Minister Sardar Md. Sakhawat Hossain said Thursday it would be possible to bring 100 percent of the country’s children under measles vaccination within the next week.
He expressed the hope at an event held at the TB Hospital in Shyamoli, Dhaka, on the morning of Thursday, April 30.
Sakhawat Hossain said the program had already covered 61 percent of its target. “Within the next week, 100 percent of children will be brought under measles vaccination,” he said. “Vaccination has already been completed in many places.”
The health minister said the program was launched quickly after the vaccine was received, without waiting for the scheduled date. “The vaccination program was scheduled to begin nationwide on May 5, but we moved it up by 14 days and started on April 20,” he said.
Noting that no measles vaccines had been administered to children for the past six years, Sakhawat Hossain said: “We have started measles vaccination on an emergency basis. If UNICEF, Gavi, the World Bank and the United States had not jointly extended assistance, the situation in the country today could have been very different. Perhaps the damage would have been much greater.”
On the handover of medicines, the health minister said the United States had handed over 600,000 GeneXpert cartridges and tuberculosis preventive medicines for 11,000 children. The donation will help in tuberculosis control, he said.
Earlier the same day, the health minister formally received the GeneXpert cartridges and children’s tuberculosis preventive medicines from the U.S. government for the National Tuberculosis Control Programme. He also presented the progress of the nationwide measles vaccination program.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report