The World Bank (WB) has offered US$ 500 million aid to Bangladesh to strengthen the national health system, train people and expand the outreach of the vaccination programme to a vast majority of the people. It is a timely offer when the nation needs additional resources to fight the Covid threat. Bangladesh is facing a new surge of Covid-19 infections threatening to kill more people, cripple the public health system and disrupt the recovery of the economy. We are yet to reopen schools and other educational institutions and the new surge and the delay in vaccinating people is likely to make the return to normalcy longer.
So far the country has recorded 566,838 infections and 8,642 deaths which are lower compared to millions of deaths and infections in big western countries. But for Bangladesh where the health system is poor and budget is inadequate, the risk is quite big to a very highly vulnerable population. Many people even could not access treatment during the peak pandemic season. We did not have fairly enough Covid-19 treatment infrastructure and supply of vaccine up until now. In our view the WB fund would surely provide the much needed resources to address the gap.
The WB said the new fund will help procure safe and effective vaccines, expand vaccine storage facilities, help develop health infrastructure and distribute vaccines to about 31 per cent of the population. It will also support a plan to cover 40 per cent of the population in the first phase of vaccination. We would appreciate the WB offer but the question is how our government which is highly inept is going to properly procure the vaccine and inoculate people down to the village level.
As we know powerful people around the government have already established control over the procurement of vaccines and their distribution. A private business house has recently claimed to have obtained the marketing right from the Indian supplier under a G2G contract. As per media reports they have taken control of the vaccine storage facilities in their warehouses and talks about its marketing is in the air at high costs. We hope WB would make sure that the benefits of it offer would reach the people at the grassroots.
