India ’s COVID-19 Vaccine Drive Is Excluding Millions of Citizens

This article aims to unpack the SOP, and argues how the government’s efforts, though a step in the right direction, are grossly inadequate to help the most vulnerable. Key issues with the clauses outlined in the document:   Vulnerable populations seem to be an afterthought, at best The system of vaccination assumes universal access to the internet, smartphones, Aadhaar, OTP, English, and digital literacy. The reality is that in 2020, smartphone penetration rate in India was only around 42 percent, while the internet was accessible to 45 percent According to the 2011 Census, India has 400,000 houseless families, and 17,73,040 homeless people. Civil society estimates that this number could be much higher, as high as 3,000,000. While the SOP does identify certain vulnerable groups such as ‘nomads, prison inmates, inmates in mental health institutions, citizens in old age homes, roadside beggars, people residing in rehabilitation centres, or camps’ (sic), it does not set any date or timeline for its operations to help these populations, which is intriguing, given the current threat of the pandemic and the extent of vulnerability of the identified groups.1 Doing so sets the narrative that these groups are often an afterthought, which was evident even earlier when 16 states that account for 40 percent of the total homeless, did not feature that in their relief circulars last year during the lockdown. While the SOP acknowledges that it received several representations fr...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Asia-Pacific Headlines Health Source Type: news