KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 20 — The Malaysian Armed Forces (ATM) will provide coordination assistance in movement control and logistics management of the COVID-19 vaccine which will arrive in Malaysia tomorrow.
Chief of Defence Force Gen Tan Sri Affendi Buang, in a statement today, said the ATM would escort the vaccine’s movement from the Vaccine Storage Centres (VSC) to the Vaccine Administration Centres (VAC) throughout the country.
“The ATM has outlined the vaccine management and handling action plan to ensure the immunisation programme can be implemented in an orderly manner, achieve its goals and reducing wastage of the vaccine,” he said.
Elaborating, he said the ATM’s representatives were also placed with the secretariat at the national and state level to assist the Health Ministry and the COVID-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) in planning the implementation of the immunisation programme especially in coordinating the logistics assistance at the VSC and VAC.
“The ATM’s roles in terms of logistics assistance include storage, delivery and distribution besides security control at all phases of the programme implementation.
“We have also outlined the implementation of the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme at the ATM level based on the priority given by the government to ATM members as the vaccine recipients,” he said.
Affendi said the immunisation programme could maintain ATM’s capacity and preparedness in protecting the country’s wellbeing and sovereignty, and ultimately achieve the herd immunity objective.
Through the action plan, the vaccination process will be supervised in stages by the ATM’s Health Service Division.
“It comprises the strategy of selecting the eligible groups by taking into account the level of infection risk based on the assignment fields and areas where they are deployed.
“It also includes the coordination of human resources and training of ATM’s health personnel to ensure the management and vaccination process can be carried out efficiently,” said Affendi.
