KOTA KINABALU: Sabah’s first vaccination programme organised together with the Armed Forces kicked off in the rural area of Long Pasia, on Thursday (June 24).
The Jiwa Murni Combat Medic Vaccination programme (ACMVP) is expected to have 500 villagers in Long Pasia and nearby areas getting their Covid-19 immunisation jabs over two days.
Sabah Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor, who launched at the event, said he hoped more of such programmes can be held in other districts to speed up the vaccination progress.
He said as of June 23, more than 350,000 people have been vaccinated including about 10,000 army personnel.
“More than 30% of the people in Sabah have registered for vaccination. We hope to see our target of 30,000 people vaccinated daily starting next month (July) to be achieved when more vaccines become available,” he said.
This programme is the Armed Forces’ first initiative in Sabah and it is jointly held with the government’s mobile outreach, the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) and village youth volunteers.
Tongod, Nabawan and Semporna districts will be Jiwa Murni’s next destinations from July, August and September this year respectively.
Earlier at the event during a briefing, Hajiji announced a RM570,000 allocation for two suspension bridges, a church, an army post and school upgrades.
Meanwhile in Tambunan district on Wednesday (June 23), it was learnt that the vaccination registration exceeded the Covid-19 vaccine supply.
District officer Jumain Abdul Ghani said he hoped that the government will be able to deliver their aim of getting more supplies of the vaccine starting July, so that more people can be vaccinated faster.
“Apart from the MySejahtera registration, villagers here have also taken the initiative to manually get the names of those who wished to be vaccinated,” he said during a vaccination programme at the district.
“So we have lots of applications and people waiting to be vaccinated by the supply is not enough,” he said.
Jumain said it is a challenge to get rural folks vaccinated but it is something that has to be worked on for the government to achieve herd immunity, as planned.
He attributed the increased awareness on the vaccination programme to the consistent information dissemination works by the district Information Department all these while.
