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Bridging the Digital Divide through Community Outreach
For Promotion of
Vaccination Eagerness and Infection Prevention and Control through Supplies in
Vulnerable Groups of Rural Maharashtra
Promotion of Vaccination, CAB and CAB+ with IPC on WASH
1. Background
COVID-19 is Corona Virus Disease, caused by a newly discovered Coronavirus, now named as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). This outbreak began in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, and now is a pandemic affecting many countries globally. India has started experiencing a sudden surge in the Covid cases since March. The state of Maharashtra has been hit very hard and with a severe rise in Covid cases, is experiencing its second wave. Vaccination is the only panacea seen right now to combat the pandemic. However, vaccinations by themselves have several challenges as below:
- Mismatch of supply and demand
There is a growing demand for vaccination from all pockets of society now due to several awareness campaigns run by the government and CSOs. However, there is also a significant gap in the supply of the vaccines due to various manufacturing and logistics issues. This is leading to confusion amongst the people and also increasing the vaccine hesitancy in some.
There are several digitally dark areas and groups in rural and tribal belts lacking access to Cowin portal for registration and scheduling of the vaccinations leading to a digital divide.
There are several people who lack the identification documents (Aadhar card, Voter card, etc) required for registration on the Cowin portal and thus are denied the access to the vaccines.
- Misinformation on Social Media
Rampant misinformation on vaccine side effects for pregnant and lactating women, people with co-morbidities etc is prevalent on social media. Negative cases get unduly amplified and highlighted on these social media channels leading to spread of further misinformation.
Travel and transport facilities to travel to the vaccination centers have been affected by the lockdown as well as lack of income amongst the people posing a serious challenge again for vaccinations. This will be further affected by the coming monsoon season, especially in the remote areas.
- Fatigue around CAB with respiratory and hand hygiene
The constant of barrage of information and monitoring of behaviour has led to a reverse reaction of pushing back due to fatigue as well as a sense of despondency.
2. Proposed Solutions
“Vaccination along with Covid Appropriate Behaviours are the only way to emerge from the pandemic”.
This is the singular and unified message that needs to be spread amongst the community to achieve the goal of minimum infections and cases in the society.
This can be achieved through the following measures:
- Positive messaging for vaccinations
- Use the time productively to prepare the community for vaccinations till there is a steady supply of vaccines by
- Promoting Covid Appropriate Behaviour
- IPC in terms of critical WASH supplies at HH, community and facility level
- Set-up and train local health workers for home based care
- Set-up rural Covid care centers so the people can be treated at local level itself
- Using the polio micro-plans process as a template, micro plan at ward and GP level to enable door-to-door awareness for 100 percent coverage to ensure that no one is left behind
- Use the ASHA workers conducting surveys to identify vulnerable groups to be targeted for vaccination
- Get support of local GPs to decide vulnerable population who need to be prioritized for vaccination based on their exposure and vulnerability rather than only age. Eg: sanitation workers, daily wage earners in MNREGA, others.
2.1 Objectives
- Correct and consistent information on new COVID-19 vaccines (availability, safety and timelines) and vaccination processes disseminated in select rural districts of Maharashtra with field activation
- Generate awareness and consensus on the phased approach of prioritization of target groups through transparent and accurate information (balancing any vaccine eagerness and vaccine hesitancy)
- Community trust and confidence on COVID-19 vaccines, address misinformation and rumors to tackle vaccine hesitancy established.
- Incentive model with early adopters
- Increased adoption and maintenance of COVID-19 appropriate behaviors to reduce risks of infection and address low risk perception of the infection.
- Essential WASH supplies and community based service delivery to build community resilience
- Reach out to those who are out of the mainstream and without Aadhar/ voter id/ ration cards for vaccination (18+).