Vaccine awareness needs to go far beyond people like us
Photo: AFPPremium
Radha Khan
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A news item in the
The Indian Express caught my eye last week. It reported that in Gurugram, Haryana (where I live), the local district authorities are worried by an uptick in the number of covid cases and are planning to intensify and ramp up the government’s ongoing vaccination drive. The aim, according to the report, is to increase the number of hospitals administering covid vaccines.
However, a closer look at this ‘ramping up’ shows just how skewed the approach is: five hospitals have been selected to run 24-hour vaccination clinics, only one of which is a public facility. The other four are exclusive and expensive private hospitals. I would imagine that the poor, even if they wish to pay the ₹250 fee for a shot, will not easily be granted entry to these spaces. Another report, this one by Payel Majumdar Upreti in