Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday exhorted officials to ensure that the country widens its Covid-19 vaccination coverage by the end of the year and enters the new year with renewed self-belief and confidence. The Prime Minister urged health workers to take the vaccine to the doorstep of the people by knocking on every door.
Immediately after returning from his visit to Italy and Glasgow, the Prime Minister held a review meeting with districts having low vaccination coverage. The meeting included districts with less than 50% coverage of the first dose and low coverage of the second dose of the Covid vaccine. The Prime Minister interacted with District Magistrates of over 40 districts in Jharkhand, Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, and other states with districts having low vaccination coverage. As per a press release issued by the Prime Minister’s Office, during the interaction, the Prime Minister discussed the issue of vaccine hesitancy and the local factors behind it in detail. He discussed a wide array of ideas that can be implemented for ensuring 100% vaccination coverage in these districts. The Prime Minister also spoke about maximising community engagement through religious and community leaders.
The district magistrates gave an account of the issues and challenges being faced in their districts, which has resulted in low vaccination coverage. They highlighted issues like rumours resulting in vaccine hesitancy, difficult terrain, challenges created due to prevailing weather conditions in recent months. They also presented an account of the steps that have been taken by them till now to overcome these challenges. The District Magistrates also shared good practices adopted by them which has led to increase in coverage.
The Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan gave an overview of the vaccination coverage in the country. He gave an account of balance vaccine dose availability in the States, and also talked about special vaccination campaigns being run in the states to further improve vaccination coverage.
Addressing the gathering, the Prime Minister thanked the present Chief Ministers and said that their attention will encourage the district to work with more determination. He urged the administrators to work more on new innovative ways to increase vaccination in their districts. He conveyed that even the better performing districts had similar challenges but they were met with determination and innovation.
The Prime Minister asked the officials to develop micro strategies, keeping in mind the experience so far to go for saturation of vaccination by addressing the gaps at local level. He also asked the district officials to make different strategies for each village, each town in the districts, if need be.
In order to increase the vaccination coverage, he suggested this can be done by forming a team of 20-25 people depending on the region. Exhorting the officials to prepare region-wise timetables for local goals, the Prime Minister said, “You will have to do your best to take your districts nearer the national average.” The Prime Minister touched upon the issue of rumours and misunderstanding about vaccination. He suggested awareness is the only solution for this and asked the state officials to take help from the religious leaders. The Prime Minister noted that religious leaders are very enthusiastic about the vaccination campaign. PM Modi recalled his meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican, a few days ago. He urged for a special emphasis on taking the message of religious leaders on vaccines to the public.
The Prime Minister asked the officials to change gears from arrangements made for taking people to the vaccination center and for safe vaccination to administering vaccines from door to door. He urged the health workers to reach every house with passion “har ghar tika, ghar ghar tika”—vaccine at every doorstep. He also asked to go in the spirit of “Har Ghar Dastak”, knocking on every door to ensure full vaccination. “Now we are preparing to take the vaccination campaign to each household. With the mantra of ‘Har Ghar Dastak’, knock on every door, every household lacking the security net of a double dose of vaccine will be approached” he said.
The Prime Minister cautioned that while knocking on every house, equal attention needed to be paid to the second dose as well as the first dose. Because whenever the cases of infection start decreasing, sometimes the feeling of urgency decreases. The urgency in administering the vaccines comes down among the people. “You will have to contact those people who have not taken the second dose despite the stipulated time on a priority basis…ignoring this has created problems for many countries in the world” he alerted.
The Prime Minister asked the district officials to learn from good practices of their colleagues in better-performing districts and emphasised approaches suitable for the local needs and the environment should be adopted.