Govt. expands facilities to store 13.5 million doses of vaccine

Nepal, which had the capacity to store only 3 million doses of corona vaccine, has expanded its capacity to 16.5 million. The government has built nine more stores with a capacity of 13.5 million doses, according to Health Ministry sources. Two stores of 40,000-40,000 liters have been expanded in Kathmandu valley and one each in Biratnagar, Janakpur, Hetauda,   Pokhara, Butwal, Surkhet and Dhangadhi. Vaccines can be stored at the rate of 1.5 million doses in each.

Head of Health Services Management Division, Ministry of Health, Dr. Rudra Prasad Marasini informed that no matter how many vaccines are received now, there will be no problem in storage. “With the expansion of additional storage to remove 13.5 million doses, vaccine storage will no longer be a problem,” he said. According to Marasini, there are currently around 10 million doses of vaccine in stock across the country. On Friday alone, 5 million syringes were vaccinated through UNICEF. More to come.

Badebabu Thapa, senior pharmacy officer of the division, said that the cold room was set up with the help of donors as the import of vaccines increased. He said that preparations have been intensified to make the vaccination campaign against Covid effective across the country. Earlier, there were 28 cold rooms across the country for regular vaccination but 11 cold rooms were vacated for vaccination against corona. However, nine cold rooms have been added as the storage capacity is not enough. In the past, the Department of Health Services had a storage capacity of 3 million vaccines in two cold rooms, Biratnagar, Central Vaccine Store, Pathalaiya, Hetauda Store, Surkhet and Dhangadhi. Now, cold rooms with storage capacity of more than 2 million doses have been set up in each state.