2.3 million city residents to get cholera vaccine

A total of 2.3 million people, aged one year and above, will get oral cholera vaccines from next month in five diarrhoea-prone areas in the capital.

"The campaign will be held twice in May and June. The dates will be announced later," Nazmul Islam, spokesperson of the health directorate, said during a virtual briefing yesterday.

Pregnant women will not be included in the campaign which will be held in Jatrabari, Dakshinkhan, Mirpur, Mohammadpur and Sabujbagh areas.

Asked why the campaign will not be held countrywide, Nazmul said they have not received enough vaccines for that.

"We have received the vaccines from the World Health Organization instead of Nigeria."

In 2020, the health directorate vaccinated 12 lakh people in Dhaka's six areas with the first dose of cholera vaccines. Due to the Covid-19 emergency, the second round of the campaign could not be held.

Meanwhile, Nazmul informed that four patients have died due to diarrhoea in Bangladesh during this year's outbreak since the second week of March.

This official number of fatalities in diarrhoeal disease is much lower than the data from the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease and Research (icddr,b).

According to icddr,b, five persons died while undergoing treatment so far among the 45,737 people who got admitted to the hospital between March 1 and March 12.

This year, there has been a record number of diarrhoea patients admitted to the icddr,b hospital.

The number of diarrhoea patients surpassed the 1,000-mark on March 16, for the first time in icddr,b's 60 years' journey.