While India continues to inoculate its people, vaccinating people in the Maoist-affected areas of Chhattisgarh is tougher and more challenging
Bengaluru: As India vaccinates its people, it is nothing less than a challenge. To produce vaccines in such high doses, and then to administer to all parts of the country is a herculean task.
To make it more bad, the Maoist affected areas in Chhattisgarh pose greater challenge.
It is here that doctors who are posted in such infested places are doing a wonderful job.
Times of India reports that Bhuneshwar Warma, a doctor who vaccinates people in Chameli, faces a tough job.
He notes, “There’s about 5km of hills to be trekked. Older people who can walk can come to us. But we have to go to those who can’t. The government has given us buses. Where buses can’t go, we have a small Tata Magic. Where that can’t go, we walk — trekking mountains, wading through rivers, with our vaccine cold storage equipment.”
It is really a tough job for such vaccinators as they have to wake up early in the morning, trek terrains which are hostile. Moreover, the vaccinating time is 9 am to 5 pm, but if there is a serpentine queue, they have to continue vaccinating them well into the night.
And then comes the problem of violence.
“In Naxal areas, 70-80% are not going to primary health centres for Covid-19 vaccination. Even for routine immunisation of children, they never go. It is only if we go into the interior areas that vaccination coverage is possible,” said a government doctor, as quoted by the website.
Apart from such problems, doctors also have to fight the ignorance of the villagers. Many of these villagers are of the view that the pandemic is innocuous.
“A lot of people think they don’t need vaccines. They say had it been such a dangerous epidemic, village after village would have been wiped out,” the website quoted Dorpa Orchha, a government doctor and the first from the indigenous Abujhmadia community.
Read Exclusive COVID-19 Coronavirus News updates, at MyNation.