Death of 9 Sitakunda Kids: ‘Vaccination stopped there 7 years ago’

Health workers had vaccinated children on a regular basis in Sitakunda's Tripura Para but they stopped visiting the remote hilly area seven years ago, say locals.

As a result, a good number of children were left out of the government's vaccination programmes. Recently, nine of them died and 88 others fell sick showing similar symptoms.

At a press conference on Monday, officials of Directorate General of Health Services said the affected children were infected by the germs of measles as they had never been vaccinated. The people of the area did not receive any health service whatsoever from the government, they said.

Meanwhile, six health workers were transferred to a remote char of Sandwip as “punishment” against the backdrop of the incident, said Azizur Rahman Siddique, civil surgeon of Chittagong.

Talking with locals, health officials, community leaders and local public representatives, The Daily Star learnt that Tripura Para is under the jurisdiction of Sitakunda Upzaila Health and Family Planning Office and health workers there were supposed to visit the area to vaccinate children.

The Chittagong civil surgeon formed a probe committee after the death of the nine children in four days from July 9. It submitted a report on Sunday. The six health workers were transferred based on the recommendations of the report.

Abdul Khalek, Mirsarai upazila health and family planning officer and also the head of the probe body, however, said health workers told him that they visited the area many times. But they claimed to have failed to convince the parents to vaccinate the children.

The guardians had a misconception that “vaccines would kill their kids” and “they hardly interacted with outsiders”, he said, quoting the workers.

Many other parents, who work throughout the day, thought “taking their kids for vaccination would be waste of time, he said.

“Despite this, we recommended taking actions against the health workers as they did not inform their higher authorities about the matter.”

Talking to this correspondent, several residents of Tripura Para, however, rejected the allegations.

Somacharan Tripura's eldest daughter Ratna, 14, was vaccinated around 10 years ago. He said health workers used to visit the area on a regular basis. ”But they stopped coming here some seven years ago. So, my other children could not be given any vaccine.”  

Somacharan's four-year-old son Uzwal became sick around 10 days ago with symptoms including fever, rash in body and breathing problem. He is now recovering at a hospital.

Pradip Kumar Tripura's eldest son Anil Tripura, 16, was also vaccinated when he was a child. But his other two brothers Saiken, 9, and Munna Babu, 7, were never vaccinated.

“We live in an extremely remote area. If the health workers don't come to us then how could we know about the dates and procedures of the government's vaccination campaigns,” said Pradip.

Asked whether there was any superstition among the locals about vaccination, he said, ”It's false. Tell me if it was true then how so many children in this area could have been vaccinated and why such incident had not happened before?”

Several other locals echoed his views.

Contacted, Dr Alauddin Majumder, director (health), Chittagong, said, “I think, it's a case of sheer negligence by the field-level health workers. They did not visit the area at all.”

Many other hilly areas in the district might also have been left out of the government's immunisation programme, he said, adding that, “We should take lessons from the Tripura Para incident.”