P. Rashmitha Priyadarsini from the Department of Community Medicine of Andhra Medical College(AMC) has been awarded the first prize in verbal paper presentation at the 26th Andhra Pradesh State IPHA/IAPSM- joint conference held virtually on January 8 and 9.
The study was done under the guidance of B. Devi Madhavi, Professor and Head, Department of Community Medicine, AMC. The study titled “Challenges in the Immunisation Service delivery during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Experiences from the rural field practice area of AMC.”The study findings are that ANMs, who were delivering the immunisation services, had faced certain challenges during the pandemic, such as lack of public transport, extra work burden, stigma from the community and vaccine hesitancy by people. They also suggested the solutions such as awareness generation, situation specific action plan and involvement of local community.
Enormous efforts
A comparison of the data on immunisation services for the years 2019 and 2020, revealed that the number of beneficiaries vaccinated had decreased during the lockdown in March and April but that gap was bridged by the enormous efforts of the multi-purpose health workers.
Andhra Medical College Principal P.V. Sudhakar congratulated her on the achievement.
