Vitamin A-plus campaign to begin October 4

A two-week national vitamin A-plus campaign will begin on October 4, aiming to administer A-plus capsules to around 22 million children aged between six and 59 months.  

The campaign will continue till October 17 at 1.2 lakh permanent centres in rural and urban areas across the country from 8am to 4pm.  

To contain the spread of Covid-19, the campaign will be held at different centres on different dates. The dates for specific areas will be announced, locally, with three-day's advance. 

Every week, the vitamin A-plus campaign will stall on specific dates in those centres where activities of the expanded programme on immunisation (EPI) take place. 

In those cases, the vitamin A-plus campaign will take place four days a week. 

"We postponed this campaign in June due to the Covid-19 outbreak. We feared that we would not be able to bring all children under the coverage," Dr SM Mostafizur Rahman, line director of the Institute of Public Health and Nutrition, said at a press conference in Dhaka on Wednesday.

"Now we hope to reach more than 90% of children," he added. 

He further said all workers involved in the campaign will be provided with surgical masks so that they can stay safe from the novel coronavirus.

Some 2.4 million children, aged between six and 12 months, will be given blue-coloured capsules; while around 19.03 million children aged between one and five years will be fed red-coloured capsules.

Children aged below six months or over five years – or with an illness – should not be given the capsules.

According to officials, health workers will also go to people's doorsteps to administer the capsules to those children who miss them during the campaign.