Opp Cong demands universal vaccination of all citizens

“We are urging both the state government and the Union government to aggressively put in place all the measures to complete universal vaccination free of cost (to all citizens),” Leader of Opposition Mukul Sangma told reporters after conducting an inspection of Shillong civil hospital.

Stating that the COVID-19 is a notified disaster, Sangma said therefore, prevention of recurrence of this must be assumed upon themselves as government as per the responsibility vested upon the authorities by the Disaster Management Act, 2005.

According to him, mitigation and prevention are the integral part of our approach to deal with any disaster.

“Therefore, vaccination must be there on time. We will still talk to the government and we will still put pressure as may be felt needed to ensure this happens,” Sangma said.

Regarding the shortage of vaccines, the former chief minister said how to overcome this shortage must be taken cognizance of and addressed in the right perspective.

He asserted that the country has already had this wealth of experience in as far as vaccination of the targeted population across the nation is concerned and has demonstrated that it is capable of inoculating vaccines to the whole population.

“We have a very robust system put in place. Since our vaccines are used and do not have the challenge of such an expensive cold chain it is not that tough to have universal vaccination on time,” Sangma said.

Urging the government to be prepared in dealing with the challenges of the third wave, the leader of opposition said how the third wave will ultimately manifest itself is always going to be something that should be kept in mind and be prepared for the element of surprises.

“Therefore, we should always be prepared to deal with the chances of any third wave coming and which bracket of the age group will be the likely victims of the manifestation of the third wave of this COVID-19 disease and how we should be prepared,” he said.

Expressing concern that the preparation is only happening now, Sangma however said it is only appropriate that this whole preparation is designed to deal with the third wave.

“Let us be very frank, preparation are still on and not completed – so it is only therefore, appropriate to look at how we can appropriately align the design and integrate all those intervention that is required to deal with the third wave where we apprehend the younger group of our population to be the likely vulnerable group,” he stated.

Asked, the former chief minister reiterated that universal vaccination is the crucial aspect which has to be addressed by the government.

He further elaborated by saying “You have to ensure that everybody is well protected, everybody is equipped with the arsenal to fight against this virus because this war against this virus is to be won collectively.  If you have vulnerable groups around us who are not well protected, which can be done only through vaccination and other measures, you will still have new hosts available for the virus, which means the virus will continue to circulate around us and attack us at will.”

“Therefore, if you want to defeat this enemy the virus, universalize coverage in as far as vaccination is concerned, every citizens must be vaccinated including the children – so all those necessary advance measures which is required to be taken must be done by the government besides other measures to  ensure that we insulate our state from the third wave.”

“I personally presume that if all measures can be put in place with the complete cooperation of the whole population, we may be able to insulate the state from the likelihood of the challenges of the third wave but that will depend on how we prepare ourselves, how we carry along everybody, how we prevent the virus to find new hosts in our vicinity – those are things which we have to look into,” he further added.

On the other hand, Sangma said that another aspect is manpower. He asserted the need of trained manpower to handle the ICU when the patient needs these critical care and to operate the ventilators.

“So the manpower aspect has to be taken cognizance of and we have discussed this. We… (need) to further ramp up the manpower who are able to deal with all these operation of ICU and ventilators etc is a matter of urgency and this aspect has to be immediately addressed and I hope the department along with the respective hospitals will have this auditing of the manpower and take corrective measures…,” he added.

By Our Reporter