When it comes to renowned personalities, district Araria of Bihar has produced several such as author Phanishwar Nath Renu and business magnate Subroto Roy. However, it still remains one of the most backward districts in the state and lacks behind in medical facilities & education institutes. The entire district went through hard times during the first and second waves of the Covid-19 and it was a greater challenge to carry out the vaccination.
In many blocks of Araria, people were avoiding vaccination for one reason or the other. But despite these challenges, the district administration under the leadership of District Magistgrate Prashant Kumar was able to vaccinate around 2.5 lakh people before 21st June, the International Yoga Day. And then the DM came out with `Mission 30,000’.
Under this, the Plan was to vaccinate at least 30,000 people on 21st June, but to everyone’s surprise the administration was able to vaccinate some 62,000 people that day.
In a conversation with Indian Masterminds, Mr Kumar shed light on how this was possible.
A Three-point plan
On 21st June, India created a huge world record of vaccinating 86 lakh people in a day and Bihar contributed with 4.88 lakh vaccinations. On the same day, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar announced a massive campaign of vaccinating six crores people in six months.
Said Mr Prashant Kumar says, “We were fortunate that CM announced this campaign but we were working on Mission 30,000 for many days. Whole vaccination process was going fine but there were certain pockets with maximum resistance towards vaccination. It was a challenge to convince the people and it required a great amount of awareness drive. So, we thought of the mission with a three-point plan. This included supply of action, logistic management and the execution on D-day”.
The mission started with a sample survey of RI (Routine Immunization for Kids) sites. These sites are pre-decided, so the district administration started the survey to find out the population which is eligible for the vaccination. The finding said that in a total population of around 500-600 only-25-30 where vaccinated.
“We considered that even if 20% people are hesitant in taking the shot then also, we are left with a people of 300 people. If we do proper management then we could vaccinate around 100 people in one site. With more than 300 sites like these, we could immunize 30,000 people in a day”, explained Mr Kumar.
Religious places turned into vaccination sites
After various meetings with the officials, local and religious leaders, as many as 355 sites were finalized by 18th of June. For the first time three religious places were turned into vaccination sites. Talking about it the Mr Kumar, “People are using religious sentiments to propagate fake news regarding the vaccination. It was necessary to shatter this propoganda. We were already creating awareness about the safety of vaccination through loud speakers in temples and mosques. This time we thought why not turn them into the vaccination sites. It’s like people have faith that they will get Raymond’s cloth in a Raymond’s showroom, so they will trust the vaccine if it is provided in religious places and in presence of priests and maulvis. We accordingly went ahead with the planand it worked”.
For procuring the vaccines, Mr. Kumar got in touch with ACS, Home Mr. Pratyay Amrit & ACEO, State Health Society Mr. AnimeshPrashar for the supplies. With their help, the District administration received around 62 thousand vaccination shot within three days.
Awareness campaign
For each site, an in-charge officer (local teacher) was appointed to look after the vaccination and cater to the needs of the public. He was asked to work with at least 10 `aganwadi’ members, jeevikadidis’ and `tola sevaks for mobilizing people and bring them to the center on the d-day. Each of them was expected to convince 10-15 people for the jabs. The person in-charge was responsible to compile the list of people expected to get vaccination provided by the helpers and make sure there was no duplication.
Similarly, officers in the block levels were appointed to look after the needs of the sites in-charge and help them if there was a shortage of vaccination or any kind of issue.
For creating awareness about Mission 30 as well as the vaccination sites, the district administration of Araraia took help from social media and newspaper too.
Mr. Prashant Kumar also arranged several workshops for the local and religious leaders and all those involved in the campaign to clear misconceptions regarding the vaccination. A video message from the `panchayat members’ was also broadcasted at many places to win the people’s trust.
D-day
Mr Kumar’s efforts yielded results and huge number of people turned up to get vaccinated on 21st June. As he recalled, “The number just multiplied. We had planned for the full day vaccination but all our stocks were emptied by mid-day. There were many blocks where we vaccinated double the number of people than the given target whiles hundreds of people were waiting for their turn.’’
Many people who couldn’t get the vaccination appeared unhappy, but they were promised of a similar campaign soon.
