Latehar administration proved it can do and it did when an eight member team comprising doctors, ANMs and sahiyas etc trudged three kilometers up and down each to reach a highly difficult, remote and inaccessible hillock at Bhokha Kharn of Lundi village in Sadar Block of this district on Sunday May 30, where 38 tribal people were tested and 21 of them eligible for the vaccination were given their first jab.
Bhokha Kharn hillock has its own infamy for naxals infestations. However, the team that reached had no fear of it at all.
Sources said the oddities were enormous. It was too humid in the jungle after the Yaas rains. Again the locale was strange and unfamiliar but the team braved it. Tthe team with test kits and vaccines doses in the vaccine carrier climbing and getting down from the hillock on a soil treacherous on account of rocks, boulders and slushy soil reminded one of the polling teams negotiating such arduous tracks to reach the polling booths in the elections in the country and the State.
Sources said the lady staff trekking to reach the hillock and the hamlet had branches of the trees for their balance of legs on a land that was deceptive.
The hillock has a hamlet of 25 tribal households hailing from the Aind community and the topography and geo location of the hillock and the hamlet belies the advent of any development here.
BDO Latehar Ganesh Rajak said all 38 tested negative, which was a matter of great relief as this hamlet had a bout of two fatalities on account of the coronavirus infection in less than three weeks.
There were more people of the age group of 18 to 44 in the lot of 21 who were vaccinated here on the hillock. Twenty five households here were given medical kit each. A girl Nilam Aind was given CM relief packet along with Rs 2000 in cash as this girl has recently lost her mother Monica Aind to the Covid infection.
DC Latehar Abu Imran said they will be making such an outreach in the most difficult of the terrains to strengthen our fight against the Covid.
He said, “CM Hemant Soren has asked us to keep our rural areas free of this infection and this outreach was first in the chain to defeat covid in the rural remote pockets and hamlets.”
“We spoke to the people, made them believe that we are there for their good health and thus we won their trust and our work went on smoothly said this officer,” said BDO, Latehar.