While in India, everyone is trying to get a piece of the pie, which is the vaccination drive. While many young Indian who are well versed or say digitally literate are unable to get the registration done due to high traffic on the Cowin portal, there is another side of India which might be struggling to get inform about the same and the govt schemes and actions doesn’t seem to be enough to get them on board. Here are a few problems India might be facing and undervaluing them for quite some time, which can seriously sabotage our fight towards eradicating COVID from India.
The earning gaps
While India is the largest consumer of smartphones, and more so after the digital revolution ushered in by Reliance’s Jio, it is well established that many people are connected to the internet at this point, but the data might not be sufficient to conclude that. While jio has done a commendable job to connect every individual to the internet the lower earning group might be buying the lower end model which supports 4G which are capable enough to run videos from YouTube but the screens are so small to register on something and make complex operations like fetching OTP so on and so forth. Most of the lower-income group uses the Jio phone or Jio phone 2, which ranges from 1.5k to 4k, which is a phenomenal phone for daily use and unlimited calls and other stuff, but lacks features that can support complex operations, such as the registration process.
Literacy
While India has an average literacy rate of 69.5% which mean near about 31 % of Indian population is illiterate let alone be digitally literate, while according to National statistic office data of 2020 the average digital literacy rate In India is nearly 77.7%, talking the liberty to assume that these people are fully literate, the percentage is of people who are both literate and digital literate should be 77.7% of 69.5% which leaves us with 54.5% of total population. Which means of total population of India only 54% people are literate and digitally equipped or posse’s knowledge to perform complex procedures such as registration etc, with such a huge divide where more than 46% of the total population is not eloquent in using pc’s and register themselves on the cowin portal it is difficult to achieve the mark of 70% population getting vaccinated to achieve heard immunity.
Awareness and ignorance.
While the problem of infodemic is also at the rise in not only India but also in various other nations, including developed nations, it is pertinent to focus on clearing any misconceptions in and about the vaccination as well as the virus itself. While the rural space population are unaware and ignorant about the virus and its harms, the situation is very grim in such places, if people keep ignoring the warning and do not heed to the call of medical emergency then the result can be very grave, there can be situations where a whole village of population less than 500 can be wiped out with the effect of pandemic and an epidemic inside a pandemic. With a rise in medical cases of COVID and black/white and cream fungi, we can expect more such fancy fungi infections in the future, as India is the diabetic capital of the world.
It is important to create proper awareness in rural settings as well as urban settings, more in rural India, as those people are more susceptible to misinformation and have less access to the internet, television, and other means of getting information.
Lack of medical help
While India is one of the nations where the medical system is already in a very bad shape, let alone in pandemic where the health care system of many developed nation has cracked down with a trickling effect, India cannot rely on expert health care solutions alone, its hight time for IMA (Indian Medical Association) and ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) to make a large space in their hearts and accept that they cannot handle this situation alone and ask for help from other doctors viz ayurvedic and homeopathic doctors. While there are instances where ICMR and IMA had filed cases against these doctors and raised objections to the use of the title DR concerning homeopathy and ayurvedic doctors, it's high time we give them the respect they need and take their help too. If modern doctors keep this arrogance at the same pace they have been keeping, the health care system is bound to crack more with each passing day.
We are on war footing with COVID and we need every help we can get, be it from anyone, in desperate times of war Indian army had to recruit farmers to fight with China and Pakistan in the past, can’t we do the same in this case?
Solutions.
The solutions are very simple and can be implemented on both the individual and national levels, but all the people, be it the government or the common citizen, we all have to take these steps and work in synergy to overcome this problem.
1. Help and register your workers and house helpers on the Cowin app and help them get vaccinated. Remember, if they are healthy, then you won’t have to worry about your health as well.
2. The govt needs to make a plan or a blue print to make the vaccination drive more reachable to all the sections of society, target block level, just like GHMC elections create a vaccination booth on every block level and vaccinate the block level people in a week or so, doing this parallelly in 4-5 block levels will target more people and a large population can be vaccinated in short span will less risk. When vaccination is done in a single venue, a huge crowd erupts, and that defeats the whole purpose of isolation and social distancing.
3. Govt needs to take every help possible and the modern doctors mustn’t have any problem with this, we have seen in past that either ICMR or IMA had filed many cases against the traditional medicine system or the one who get formal degree in many places, let us just formalize the system and recognize the doctors or jhola chaap doctors by giving them training them. They are primary health service providers and very close to the rural population. Instead of witch-hunting them, let’s use them as war-footing soldiers.
4. Distribution of vaccination on priority based on the number of cases and containment zones. During the first wave, the government color-coded the areas in red, orange, and green zones. By using this mechanism, which is already in place, we can decide which places to vaccinate more and less, create a heat map of the area, and make proper arrangements.
It is important that we take steps and win the war against the virus collectively in time. If this doesn’t happen, there are chances that the virus may make another major mutation, which could drop the efficacy of vaccination by a larger margin.
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