26,000 health assistants to rejoin work from today

After assurance from the officials of the directorate general of health services about better payment, some 26,000 health assistants will join work from today.

Due to their work abstention since November 26, the measles-rubella vaccination campaign for children scheduled for December 6 had to be pushed to December 12.

Even after that "no assistant under the banner of Bangladesh Health Assistant Association (BHAA) joined the ongoing measles-rubella vaccination campaign" across the country.

"We had a meeting with honourable director general of the DGHS. He assured us that our demand will be met. So, we will join work from tomorrow [today]. After the measles-rubella campaign, however, we will go on strike again if our demand is not met," Sheikh Rabiul Alam, president of BHAA told The Daily Star yesterday.

He, however, said any programme involving Covid-19 vaccination will be out of the question if they strike in future.

Shamsul Haque Mridha, director of EPI at the DGHS told this newspaper, "We have held measles-rubella vaccination campaign in city corporation areas in last two days."

"If they join work from tomorrow [today], we could be able to start it countrywide from next day [tomorrow]. Because, they would need one-day training. In that case, we have the chance to extend the campaign timeline by two or three days," headed.

According to the DGHS, some 3.4 crore children aged between nine months and ten years will be vaccinated with a dose of the measles-rubella vaccine under the campaign scheduled to be held between December 12-24.

There are three types of staffers under the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) programme of DGHS. They are: health inspector, assistant health inspector, and health assistants.

Under the pay scale, the health assistant post is 16th grade and they are demanding that EPI staffers' pay scales be upgraded to 11th, 12th and 13th grades respectively.

Rabiul said the prime minister had made promises to them in a conference on December 6, 1998. "We were assured several times that our demand will be met," he said.

Due to the BHAA strike, routine vaccinations for at least 10 diseases, including TB, polio and diphtheria, remained suspended across the country.

Source said there are 1.2 lakh EPI vaccination centres across the country where health assistants are the main driving force. The government holds vaccination programmes once a month in each of the centres.

Meanwhile, Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, has approved the National Vaccine Deployment Plan, Dr Shamsul Alam said.

"We sent our proposal on December 7 and Gavi approved it on December 10. We have finished official procedure to get 20 percent of the different vaccines of our demand from Gavi. We will get vaccine from them at the beginning," he said.

Bangladesh will buy 68 million doses from the Gavi under a global arrangement called COVAX. The first shipment of vaccine doses from Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is likely to be delivered between February and June next year, said officials of the health directorate.