We have also notified the midwives, nurses, and doctors associations regarding the plan to authorise midwives to conduct vaccination
Bandung, West Java (ANTARA) - West Java's COVID-19 Vaccination Acceleration Task Force Head Dedi Supandi confirmed that 12.5 thousand midwives in the province will serve as vaccinators to expedite the regional government's efforts to achieve herd immunity by December 2021.

"We have changed our vaccination strategy from setting vaccination centres to distributing the vaccine to midwives to ease vaccination access in remote areas," Supandi stated.

The midwives are allowed to open their place as a vaccination centre or perform door-to-door vaccination drives for the elderly at the end of their shift at 4 p.m. local time daily, the task force head remarked.

Supandi confirmed that the provincial authority had coordinated with West Java's Population and Family Planning Agency (BKKBN) regarding the deployment of midwives as vaccinators.


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"We have also notified the midwives, nurses, and doctors associations regarding the plan to authorise midwives to conduct vaccination," Supandi added.

The decision to employ midwives as vaccinators was taken to boost the daily vaccination rate currently recorded at an average of 364 thousand doses. The midwives can commence the vaccination from this week after receiving the vaccine vials, he added.

If each midwife meets her daily vaccination target, she would contribute to more than 500 thousand vaccine doses each day and potentially increase the daily vaccination rate by more than 100 percent to reach a total of around 800 thousand doses daily, Supandi noted.

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"If each midwife is given 50 vaccine doses, then we multiply the number of midwives by 10 thousand. Thus, we will have an additional 500 thousand vaccine intakes daily," the task force head pointed out.

Apart from involving midwives, the West Java authority has organized a "Love Elderly Week" to encourage students and the youth to take their grandfather or grandmother to the vaccination centre.

"The program would be conceived and announced by sub-district authorities, local schools, or health centre," he added.


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Translator: Ajat Sudrajat, Nabil Ihsan
Editor: Fardah Assegaf
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