With awareness campaigns in local dialects, inclusion of influential villagers and religious leaders in busting myths around Covid-19 vaccination and wall paintings encouraging people to take the jabs, the Jharkhand Government has managed to overcome the widespread hesitancy against immunisation among the members of Particularly Vulnerable Tribe Groups (PVTGs) in the State over the past one month, officials said on Wednesday.
However, convincing the PVTGs to get vaccinated was not an easy task.
Many members of these tribe groups were of the opinion that vaccination would lead to death and even minor side effects after the jabs triggered major panic among them, officials involved in the campaign said.
Recalling an incident in Koderma, an official involved in the vaccination campaign said that some members of PVTGs ran into jungles and climbed atop trees to avoid vaccination when the campaign started earlier this year.
“Villagers can turn violent in no time if they feel threatened. In this case, many of them were sure that vaccines would kill them.The greatest challenge for us was to convince them to take the jabs without getting into any heated exchange of words,” the official from Koderma district said, requesting anonymity.
As per the 2011 Census, there are nine PVTGs in Jharkhand — Asur, Birhor, Birjia, Hil Kharia, Korwas, Mal Pahariya, Parhaiya, Sauria Paharia and Savar.
With a total population of 2,23,327, these tribe groups are spread across various districts of Jharkhand, mostly in Santhal Pargana, East Singhbhum and parts of Koderma.
Several surveys have highlighted that several members of these tribe groups suffer from malnutrition, anaemia, illiteracy and lack of access to basic resources.
One of the first vaccination campaigns for PVTGs was run in Gurabanda block of East Singhbhum about a month ago. Vaccination teams had to have dialogues with the leaders of groups protesting against vaccination and convince them to end the protests there. Eventually, pictures of some of the main protestors getting vaccinated were put up on flexes and pasted on walls in the villages to encourage vaccination, officials said.
In a bid to increase the acceptance for vaccines among the members of these tribe groups, the health department roped in influential village personalities and religious leaders who bridged the communication gap between the government and the tribe groups. The religious leaders and other influential villagers took the jabs first in front of the villagers to prove that they were safe and then asked them to get vaccinated, officials said.
“We launched a campaign to vaccinate PVTG members on priority basis about a month ago. After initial hiccups, we managed to put an end to the apprehensions of these tribe groups,” said the nodal officer of health department’s Information, Education and Communication (IEC) wing, Dr Siddharth Tripathi.
The State is yet to compile data related to vaccination of PVTGs, but officials spearheading the campaign say that at least half of them
have received the first dose of vaccine.