Dubai’s vaccination drive a roaring success

Suchitra Bajpai Chaudhary | Chief Reporter

In its battle against COVID-19, the UAE has topped vaccination figures globally with most its population being given both doses of the vaccine.

Dr Farida Al Khaja, CEO at DHA’s Clinical Support Services and Nursing Sector, Chairperson of the COVID -19 Vaccination Steering Committee and who led the drive in Dubai, says it was not just about dealing with the logistical challenges involved, but also on keeping up the morale of the staff.

From the time of the outbreak of the coronavirus, the key issue was to optimise the use of available nursing and ancillary staff.

Dr Al Khaja said: Staff management was critical. We had to have a proper plan to redistribute them, tweak their working hours, change shifts and even recalculate their ratio based on the requirements of regular hospitals, field hospitals and clinics. To ensure seamless working, we had to do several recalculations so that they were available to serve the patients in need of critical care.”

She said the welfare of the nursing staff was the priority and all help was extended to them.

“For DHA, it was crucial to preserve the morale of its entire healthcare staff – the nurses, doctors, administrative and other ancillary team members. Each one of them was involved in the management of the pandemic. Our human resources department devised programmes that were empathetic to our staff. We took definite action to bring relief to them. Among other things, we took care of their families in their absence as they were required to work for long hours in the hospital. We even took their loved ones to hospitals if they were sick.”

She said the DHA ensured many of the staff were provided hotel accommodation when they were required to work for long hours and feared exposure to the virus despite all precautions. “We were empathetic to their needs. Wherever possible, we made sure that the families of our nursing staff were not falling short of necessities at home. We functioned as one cohesive family, taking care of each other and keeping ourselves safe. This helped them work with focus and deliver their services in the best way.”

Training healthcare workers

In many cases, nurses from different departments found themselves working with COVID-19 patients where they had no experience.

DHA had prepared for this eventuality by providing all such nurses with relevant training in handling medical equipment, diagnostic tools and medicines within the COVID-19 wards.

Dr Al Khaja said: "The training was done in collaboration with the medical education and research department at DHA and the Mohammad Bin Rashid University of Advanced Medical Sciences (MBRU). We focused on providing our staff with accurate and updated information on COVID-19, how to deal with critical patients, precautions to be taken, information to be given to relatives of COVID-19 patients and so on.”

A pro-active multi-pronged strategy

A multi-pronged and proactive vaccination strategy in Dubai helped bring down the transmission rate. With several vaccination centres open, people were able to access the one nearest to their home. For those unable to reach the centres, home vaccination facilities were provided.

Dr Al Khaja said: “We started the vaccination campaign in Dubai on December 23, 2020. Since the beginning, we followed a systematic programme that involved vaccinating the eligible population in phases. First, came the priority groups, the senior citizens and those with co-morbidities; then came the pregnant and lactating women; the third phase targeted those in the 16 and above age group; in yet another phase, we introduced vaccination to children aged 12 and above. Our phases were based on ongoing research, studies and best practices in vaccination campaigns around the world.”

Home vaccination for the vulnerable

Dr Al Khaja said home vaccinations were the best option for some segments of the population.

“Vaccination is the best way to safeguard the population against COVID-19. It is also the best way to ensure that even if someone gets the infection post-vaccination, he or she does not suffer any complications. Therefore, we concentrated on home vaccination services for people of determination, Emiratis above 50 and expatriates above 60 years of age. Before they could reach out to us, we reached them.”

She said DHA also made sure the vaccination centres were adequately spread out to cover even crowded pockets of residence. “I can say that our campaign was extremely successful and we are on target to achieve our goal of vaccinating 100 per cent of Dubai’s eligible population by December 2021.”

Excellent teamwork

She said: “To measure our success and how we achieve our goals, it is important to understand how the Vaccination Steering Committee works. Within our steering committee, we had several teams - such as those dealing with operations, customer satisfaction and most important of all, the scientific team, which took care of all the vaccine-related developments.”

Besides, the teams also tracked ongoing announcements on scientific data and new research outcomes by the international community. “We were keeping ourselves updated with all advancements about vaccination, such as eligibility of different age groups and booster doses. Our scientific committee provided us with the necessary information and we took decisions based on this data. I would attribute our success to excellent teamwork and group synergy,” she added.