Duare Sarkar camps will now have vaccination centres and other health check facilities, the state health department has decided.
The move is aimed at vaccinating a part of the reluctant section of the population by offering vaccines at the doorstep, said officials.
Duare Sarkar is an outreach programme under which government officials set up camps in a locality to receive applications from the residents of the neighbourhood who wish to enrol themselves to access government welfare schemes or get corrected caste certificates and documents linked to land.
In Kolkata, the Duare Sarkar camps are held across all the 144 wards under Kolkata Municipal Corporation with a special task force headed by the municipal commissioner overseeing the outreach programme.
So far, health check-ups were never been a part of these camps.
On Tuesday, health secretary Narayan Swaroop Nigam told district magistrates and chief medical officers of health in the districts to organise “population-based health check-up camps” including Covid vaccination at all Duare Sarkar camp sites from January.
“Around 2.6 crore people is yet to receive their second jabs. We want to wrap up the programme for this section by February end,” said an official.
Besides vaccination, these camps will carry out screenings for different ailments like hypertension, diabetes, oral cancer and tuberculosis.
