Needle of suspicion guided by rumours



Needle of suspicion guided by rumours: Fear of CAA-NRC makes anti-vaccination views worse in Balapur town 02:12

Akola

Vidarbha

An intensive and customised campaign was launched by the government machinery, spearheaded by a couple of Chief Minister fellows (below) and a battery of accredited social health activists (above); as a result, this year, at least 505 children from the small town were vaccinated

Zilla Parishad

In the small, 50,000-strong town of Balapur in Maharashtra, where the primary livelihood is centred around brick kilns, fears sparked by the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC), both pushed to the fore by the Modi government, have compounded a long simmering misconception to a new level.It took an intensive and customised campaign by the government machinery, spearheaded by a couple of Chief Minister (CM) fellows, to bring the townspeople around and allow their kids to be vaccinated.For years now, residents here — mostly impoverished and uneducated — have summarily rejected numerous state-run immunisation programmes on the suspicion that it was a ploy of the authorities to contain the population of their community and collect their personal data, fuelled by rumours of injections leading to impotency and DNA profiling being conducted on the local population.Around 90 per cent of the population of this town, located at the confluence of three rivers indistrict ofregion, is Muslim. When the latest round of immunisations rolled out between December 2 and 8 last year, numbers reported by the drive rang alarm bells. “We found that they did not even cover 12 per cent of the target group in the first five days. We learnt that a huge resistance had built up on ground, so we decided to find out why,” said Dr Suresh Asole, district health officer. It took an intensive and customised campaign by the government machinery, spearheaded by a couple of Chief Minister (CM) fellows, to bring the townspeople around and allow their kids to be vaccinated.The story that unfolded threw up a completely new challenge before the health administration. Zakira had come to the vaccination centre at the Satrinjipura anganwadi, tagging her daughter and two grandchildren. She pointed out that none in her family had been vaccinated to date and was adamant that neither did her grandchildren need the immunisation. A team of 10, including the health department officials, arogya sevikas and also a World Health Organisation representative converged to make her and her family understand the need for the preventive measure.However, their refrain was that they could not be forced to take the vaccination and a heated debate ensued. After much cajoling and coaxing they relented, allowing the children to be administered a polio vaccine and a vitamin dose, with the commitment that they will be back for the remaining inoculations.Zakira contended, “What is the need for vaccines? Our family has survived without any such intervention. We’ve been told that these vaccines will render our children impotent. How can we risk that? If so many people are saying this, it must be true. However, the officials have vouched that nothing of the sort will happen and offered to take responsibility. They called on us several times prompting us to check it out this once.”As it turned out, these misconceptions were being fanned by rumours circulated through social media, particularly WhatsApp. Such was the infiltration that families were divided on the issue of vaccines. Of eight children in Shaija Parveen’s family, six got inoculated. However, one of her sisters-in-law, Samina Parveen, remained unmoved on the matter and desisted from sending her kids for the exercise.“I was also scared initially. They said our children will be handicapped. None in our family had been vaccinated before this. But the campaign told us this was false information and officers assuaged our fears, so we went with the process. But not Samina. I even fought with her while trying to convince her, and offered to bring her children along for the vaccination but she simply refused,” Shaija told Mirror.Samina stood her ground. “Inko Modi ne bheja hai hamari nasl khatam karne ke liye (Modi has sent them to end our lineage). Our children will become impotent. Allah will take care of our kids. We don’t need anything,” she insisted. But the government officials persevered, asking her if she ensured medication for her children and then argued for the vaccines until she finally changed her stand.Apart from the fear of vaccines inducing impotency, the citizens were also wary that the ulterior motive of the exercise was to collect data and do DNA mapping. “Ulemmas have asked the people to not submit any document to government officials. So when the team went to any area, people refused to let them into their homes and refrained from entering into any conversation with them. The suspicion was accentuated by the sight of the officials jotting down information with their pencils,” informed local corporator Salim Ahmad, who played a key role in the government’s campaign.Coming up against this stone wall, the ground staff tried to get around it in different ways. As the children were not accessible at home, they chose to do the vaccination in schools, only to find that the children were skipping attendance on those particular days. Door-todoor campaign had also failed. At this point, CM fellows Siddhesh Haryan and Shubham Badgujar, who were working in the district, stepped in. “The problem with this town is that there is no dedicated health facility here doing regular outreach with its denizens. With a population of 50,000, it is designated as an urban centre, keeping out the primary health centres and accredited social health activists (ASHAs). So we had to find other avenues to reach out to the citizens and build the trust that was missing,” Badgujar explained.With the help of theCEO, Ayush Prasad, they embarked on a focused initiative to widen immunisation coverage. About 150 ASHAs from surrounding areas were roped in to work in Balapur exclusively, though the town was not in their jurisdiction. This done, 70 three-member teams were dispatched to run a survey of the children. The ASHAs had doors shut on their faces when they visited for their surveys. Some even ran away with their children to avoid them. “At one place, we’d begun explaining the importance of the measles and rubella vaccine, when they balked at the mention of MR, decoding it to be Modi and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS),” said Anil Giri, a health worker at Balapur.So next, they turned to the religious institutions. Announcements were made from the masjid and the local mullahs and maulvis were recruited into the campaign. Pamphlets, both in Marathi and Urdu, were distributed, underscoring the importance of vaccines. Prasad joined the officers on the ground, as they interacted with each household, taking all kinds of questions and addressing each of them. Even the district collector swung into action calling in corporators and social workers from Balapur for a meeting to persuade to take personal interest in pushing the drive. Help of private doctors, too, was enlisted. “We visited each home at least four times. It took them a while to warm up to us. Initially, they even denied that the child was theirs and refused to part with any information. Our repeated visits helped to build trust. Slowly the women started chit-chatting with us, even as they evaded giving out a response to our survey queries. At some houses where we realised the husbands were the decision-makers, we engaged with them. We also drew the elders into our conversations,” recounted Sarla Jane, an ASHA.Prasad who personally experienced the tough negotiation the campaign called for, pointed out, “Most of the children were inoculated in the post-natal phase, but received no further vaccines pursuant to that. The ASHAs worked really hard despite not getting paid for their efforts. Everyone took this up as a challenge. Some of the citizens I interacted with sought written assurance that no adverse impact will come of the drive. I told them I would do it. They were also concerned about the kids contracting fever post-vaccination. We explained that it was a sign that the vaccine was working. They had many more questions that we addressed. Some even talked of such exercise working against their religious belief. We bust these myths. The participation of private doctors too helped. We left no stone unturned in getting them to accept the vaccinations.”The efforts continued into the day of vaccination — January 8, 2020 — with follow-ups. Haryan told Mirror, “We kept tabs on the turnout and when we heard of areas where response was low, we deputed teams to do last round coaxing.” This clearly helped. The immunisation drive had targeted vaccinating 487 children. But last week, health officers found themselves vaccinating 505 them. Yet, rather than rest on their laurels, the campaigners are already preparing to ensure the kids are back for the next round of vaccination and get into a habit of keeping their date with the exercise on a regular basis.