SRINAGAR: Weyan village of Bandipora district in Jammu & Kashmir has become the first village of the country to record 100% inoculation of all people over 18 years for Covid-19.
This national record is attributed to the “J&K Model”, under which the administration reached out to the people, instead of the people flooding the vaccination centres.
Dr Bashir Ahmed Khan, Chief Medical Officer of Bandipora, said due to difficult terrain the vaccinators had to walk around 18km on foot to reach this village.
“It’s a village of nomads having no access to internet.
So, the health officials decided to take a difficult journey in this north Kashmir village and save precious lives.
There is no well-defined route and it is a very dangerous trek, but we didn’t rest until the last eligible person got the vaccine dose,” Khan said.
Weyan is 28km from Bandipora town and the first 10km of the journey is by road, up to a place called Athwatoo.
The remaining 18km is by foot, up the hills.
“Residents over 18 years, 362 in all, have been vaccinated.
These nomadic people leave the village and go to the still upper reaches of the mountains, along with their cattle, during summer.
So, it was important to reach out to them before they moved out,” Khan said.
The “J&K Model” has adopted a 10 point strategy to vaccinate entire eligible population at accelerated pace.
Despite initial vaccine hesitancy, the current vaccination rate of the UT is more than 70% for people over 45 years, which is double that of the national average.
The first strategy is booth-level management involving preparation of lists of eligible population, followed by “Vaccine on Wheels” – reaching out to people in far-flung areas.
State Immunization Officer, Dr Shahid Hussain, said maximum number of session sites in a day with well-coordinated vaccination efforts is also paying dividend.
“We had prior micro planning and execution, a teach session site, and involved police and media in crowd management and awareness.
We have constituted in every district a dedicated team of healthcare workers, who were ready to work even during holidays and weekends.
Coordination between various departments, like utilization of services of teachers and booth-level officers as verifiers and their training by the health and family welfare department was another key feature of the J&K Model,” Hussain said.
Hussain added that despite difficult terrain (like in Shopian, Ganderbal) and poor mobile connectivity, the teams were relentless in vaccinating people living in the far reaching corners of the district and deploying influencers like religious leaders, local elders, to counter vaccine hesitancy.
Riyaz Ahmed of Weyan village said: “When health workers tried to convince me to take the Covid-19 vaccine some weeks ago, I refused, saying that the jab would kill me! My mother is 80 years old, while my father is 87.
I was scared to get them vaccinated.” “Also, there hasn’t been one Covid-19 positive case in our village since the beginning of the pandemic, last year.
Therefore, we did not want to risk taking the vaccine shot.
It was only after some of our village residents took the shot and survived that I developed faith in vaccines,” Reyaz added.
Dr Masarrat Iqbal, BDO of Bandipora, said that myths about Covid-19 vaccine were the biggest hurdle in vaccinating villagers of Weyan but, that, they succeeded in vaccinating every one in the end.