Facing vaccine fears, Jamtara calls up unlikely allies — quacks This model of engaging quacks in reaching out to the villages is also working in another district – Khunti – and is likely to be replicated across the state soon, according to a senior government WEARING A mask and gloves, Sushil Ghosh moves door to door in Dalabar village in Jharkhand’s Jamtara district, bordering West Bengal, asking people to follow Covid appropriate behavior and get themselves vaccinated.
Many in this village take the suggestions of “Doctor Ghosh” – as they call him – seriously and follow them. Only, he is not a doctor. Ghosh, who has been treating people for basic ailments for the past 20 years after a brief stint in a medical store, is one of the 419 local quacks or healers roped in by the district administration to spread awareness about the virus as well as remove vaccine hesitancy – the primary challenge for officials in the rural areas.
Read | HomeIndiaVaccine inequity deepens in young: 85% of those jabbed are in just seven states This model of engaging quacks in reaching out to the villages is also working in another district – Khunti – and is likely to be replicated across the state soon, according to a senior government official. So far, Jamtara has vaccinated only 28 per cent of its 45plus population. The district has 1,024 active cases as on May 10 and recorded 38 deaths since the start of the Jamtara Deputy Commissioner Faiz Ahmed Mumtaz says ahead of engaging them in Covid-related work, all 419 selected people were called for a meeting with the concerned Block Development Officers and Circle Officers, and basic information related to the virus was At a Public Health Centre in Shiulibari, 30 km away, Gautam Chandra Minz is maintaining the vaccination register as an Auxiliary Nurse Midwife is administering vaccine jabs to villagers.
“You may get fever, but you should not feel scared,” Minz, for whom it’s the first day in his new role, tells a villager. Like Ghosh, Minz too made rounds of the village in the morning, asking people to get vaccination. “I even brought two people along with me, but more are not turning up. We have to work in a war footing and make a lot of people aware,” he says. An Intermediate pass, Minz says he worked with a medical store for 25 years and accompanied doctors to learn about medical issues.
For the past one year, he has been running a “clinic”. On the replication of the Jamtara model across the state, a source in the state health department says, “We will informally involve all quacks, and train them on presumptive treatment as well as to fight vaccine