Keypoints:
- Weyan village of Bandipora district in Jammu and Kashmir is the first village in the country to record 100% inoculation.
- Weyan has inoculated all its citizen over 18 years of age with Covid vaccine.
The first village in the country is Weyan village in Bandipora district of Jammu and Kashmir which has inoculated all its people above the age of 18 years with Covid vaccine. National record is attributed to the ‘J & K model’, in which the administration has reached out to people instead of the people crowding in vaccination centres.
Dr. Bashir Ahmad Khan who is the Chief Medical Officer of Bandipora district has said that 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 the 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 located 28 kilometres from Bandipora and the first 10km of the journey is by road, up to a place called Athwatoo. The remaining 18km is by foot, leading towards 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 Jammu and Kashmir model has adopted a 10 point strategy in order to fully vaccinate the population who are eligible. Inspite of the initial vaccine hesitancy, current vaccination rate of the UT is more than 70% for people over 45 years, which is double than that of the national average.
‘Booth level management’ is the first strategy which involves preparing the list of eligible population which is followed by ‘Vaccine on Wheels’ which reaches out to people in far flung areas.
Dr. Shahid Hussain, who is the State Immunization Officer, has said that 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.
He also added that despite the difficult terrain (like in Shopian, Ganderbal) and poor mobile connectivity, the teams were relentless in vaccinating people who were 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.
BDO of Bandipora, Dr. Masarrat Iqbal has said that the Covid-19 vaccine myths were the biggest hurdle in vaccinating villagers of Weyan but, they succeeded in vaccinating every one in the end.
