Lovely Barua is one of the 35 women who are now part of the 100 strong team of vaccinators working in the Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar. More and more women vaccinators are being engaged as they have easy access to the families in the camps, especially for vaccinating young adolescents girls. On an average, Lovely vaccinates 200 children on a vaccination day.
This is what she says about her job:
“Often 12 to 15-year-old girls are reluctant to come to the vaccination sites. So I go to them. I try and gather as many of girls from the area in one of the makeshift houses, and vaccinate them there to give them a bit of privacy.”
On one of her biggest challenges:
“Mobilising the community for vaccinations. I try to make them understand the importance of vaccination,” says Lovely, who like all vaccinators in Cox’s Bazar is part of the Government of Bangladesh’s health workforce that WHO has been training and closely monitoring to achieve the highest possible coverage in immunization campaigns.