1mg, India’s leading consumer health platform, has partnered with Seekify, an upskilling platform and Healthcare Sector Skill Council (HSSC) to launch a program to provide adequate skills training to healthcare professionals (medical students, nursing students, pharmacists, phlebotomists, etc.) in the administration of COVID-19 vaccination.

With the second wave of COVID-19 causing widespread loss of lives, scaling up vaccination drives is the dire need of the hour to reduce hospitalizations and deaths. According to the FICCI E&Y Report ‘Protecting India: Public Private Partnership for vaccinating against COVID-19’, ~1 lakh healthcare professionals (as inoculators) and ~2 lakh support staff/ volunteers would be required to vaccinate the entire adult population.

With the acute pressure on the existing health care infrastructure and professionals, there is an immediate need to prepare a second line of inoculators among allied health professionals. A series of noteworthy decisions have recently been taken by the Central government in this regard. In the press release issued on May 3, it was announced that Medical Interns, Final Year MBBS students, BSC/ GNM nurses could be deployed to reduce the workload on existing doctors engaged in COVID-19 duty.

Speaking about this, Dr. Thomas Davis, Director of Standards and Industry Engagement, Health Sector Skill Council said, “There is an urgent need to expand the pool of trained vaccinators in the country. Given the strain on our healthcare infrastructure, this initiative will help in training thousands of healthcare workers and preparing them in the fight against COVID-19.”

Dr. Varun Gupta, SVP, Medical Affairs at 1mg said, “1mg’s training program for vaccinators has been designed with experts and has modules on basics of vaccination, how it is to be administered, standard precautions to be taken, monitoring of side effects following immunization, and operational guidelines of the government. Post completion of these training modules, candidates would have to undergo an assessment by the Health Sector Skill Council and only successful candidates will be issued certification from HSSC and 1mg. 500 healthcare workers have already been trained under this program, 1mg aims to train 10,000 professionals by collaborating with medical, nursing, and pharmacy colleges.”

This is yet another endeavor by 1mg to make healthcare accessible and affordable for a billion Indians. Vaccination drives have already been conducted successfully by 1mg in RWAs and in collaboration with empaneled private vaccination centers across metros for the 45+ age group in the last phase. For the next phase, 500+ corporates with a 2M+ employee base have already signed up for vaccinating their employees. By creating a certified vaccination administration course in partnership with HSSC, 1mg moves one step closer to their broader goal of being at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19.