Highlights Of #VaccinateIndia Telethon: An Initiative To Encourage Vaccination Against COVID-19

Rajasthan is the largest state in the whole country from the geographical point of view. We have a desert here, a tribal region where every single house lives on a hill. So, it's a very big challenge to vaccinate 8 crore people of Rajasthan. We started preparations in October itself. We prepared for 3.5 months - October, November, December and till January 16 - to train manpower, to build storage centres, to develop cold chain points and other preparations. The vaccination began on January 16.  The big thing is that we built three storage centres in the capital Jaipur. There we can store bumper stock. We have seven divisions where we have developed storage capacity. And there are 34 medical districts and we have developed storage capacity in each district. We have also developed 2,444 cold chain points. Each district headquarter has one mobile van for the transportation of vials to CSC, PSC, SDH - vaccination sites. We have trained 54,000 ASHA workers, 56,000 anganwadi workers and 2400 ANM. Before COVID-19, CM had started Nirogi Rajasthan for preventive care under which we created Swasthya Mitra. Under that, we selected 2 volunteers each in our 40,000 revenue villages. So, we had that manpower as well. There was also some education department personnel; we trained all of them in 3.5 months.