Vaccination of healthcare providers continues in KP

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Department continued vaccination of the doctors and other healthcare providers on Friday against the fast-spreading the novel coronavirus in the province.

The Health Department had kicked off the vaccination drive in the province on Wednesday. Chief Minister Mahmood Khan had formally launched the immunisation campaign in Islamabad where he had called the doctors and other healthcare providers of Hyderabad Medical Complex (HMC), Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) and Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH).

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has received 16,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine from the federal government. China has gifted 0.5 million doses of the vaccine to Pakistan. The government has decided to vaccinate the healthcare providers and particularly the frontline health workers first as they directly dealt with Covid-19 patients in the hospitals.

Seven health workers from three hospitals of Peshawar were vaccinated against Covid-19 on the very first day, including Hospital Director, Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) Peshawar Dr. Faisal Shehzad, Assistant Professor Dr. Muhammad Shah, Staff Nurse, Ayesha Zahir from Hayatabad Medical Complex, Dr. Abid Ali and Charge Nurse Waqarullah from Khyber Teaching Hospital, Charge Nurse Tariq Rahim and Technician Saeedullah of the Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar.

Around 199 healthcare providers have been vaccinated against the viral infection to date. Of them, 64 were immunised on Thursday and 135 more were given the vaccine on Friday. According to officials of the Health Department, 80 healthcare providers were vaccinated in Peshawar, 60 in Swat, 28 in Nowshera and 14 in Kohat.

In KP, there are 80,000 healthcare providers, including doctors, paramedics, nursing staff and health technicians. Of them, 68,042 healthcare providers have been categorised in the frontline health workers, directly dealing with Covid patients. Among them, 10,000 are from the private health sector hospitals.

KP has lost 33 healthcare providers as a result of coronavirus, 19 of them doctors, six paramedics, two nursing staff members and six non-technical health workers or Class-IV employees.

Also, since the number of doses of covid vaccine is quite limited, therefore the government has decided to vaccinate the frontline healthcare providers in the first phase. Among the frontline workers, the KP Health Department selected 15,700 health workers in 36 districts of the province, including the tribal districts, for the administration of the vaccine.

The provincial Health Department has received 16000 doses of covid vaccine and will get the remaining 16000 doses after 21 days. “Obviously, the priority is to vaccinate the health workers dealing with covid patients at the ICUs, isolation wards, collecting their swab, and the non-technical staff working in covid units with patients and involved in their shifting. I have been working till late night in the Health Department but I am not the frontline worker to get vaccinated,” an official of the provincial Health Department told The News.

Pleading anonymity, he said they had established 280 vaccination centres in 16 public sector hospitals of 36 districts of the province. He said the hospitals and frontline healthcare providers were selected for the administration of the vaccine on the basis of bed occupancy, the positivity of covid cases and the number of health workers involved with covid patients.

Since Peshawar has comparatively better health services than the rest of the districts, therefore most of the people prefer to take their patients to the hospitals in Peshawar. Peshawar has three teaching hospitals and two civil hospitals, including Naseerullah Khan Babar Memorial Hospital and Police Services Hospital.

It received a major share in the vaccine for its frontline healthcare providers as it suffered more human losses than any other district in KP. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has lost 1941 people to the coronavirus, in which Peshawar alone recorded 998 deaths.

Also, of 68,004 positive cases in KP, Peshawar recorded 27,340. All the three hospitals in the provincial capital city, including Lady Reading Hospital, Khyber Teaching Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex, allocated major space for the covid patients.

Patients referred from other districts with serious complications can hardly get a bed in the ICUs of any of these hospitals as these hospitals share the maximum burden of patients of the province.

Second is Mardan in terms of bed occupancy and the high number of positive cases in the province. In Mardan, the Mardan Medical Complex (MMC) and District Headquarter Hospital (DHQ) have been declared as vaccination centres. The Health Department has established these centres in the seven divisional headquarters.