SHANGLA: Health workers have complained that they are struggling to achieve the coronavirus inoculation targets in Shangla district due to the people’s misconceptions about the vaccine.

They told Dawn that most families in rural areas believed in conspiracy theories about Covid-19 vaccination and therefore, inoculation rates were low.

The vaccinators said it was very hard for them to convince the people, who thought vaccine was harmful to their health and caused sterility and even deaths.

They, however, said constant persuasion and pressure tactics helped them administer vaccine to some people.

The residents insisted that they feared coronavirus vaccine over health concerns.

Official claims situation improving due to growing awareness, restrictions

Abdur Rehman insisted that his father complained about high fever and body pain after being vaccinated against the virus and that one of his neighbours claimed the inoculation caused infertility, so he avoided vaccination.

He said he even stopped using public transport fearing the health teams would forcibly vaccinate him.

The resident, however, said he got the Covid-19 vaccine jab last week for being ‘unable to travel’ but his vaccination fears were still there.

Lady health worker Rehana Bibi told Dawn that initially, vaccinators went from house to house in catchment areas and formally asked women to visit nearby health facilities for vaccination against Covid-19 but most women declared the vaccine harmful and caused health problems, and didn’t follow the advice.

She said the door-to-door vaccination drive, which was launched lately, also failed to achieve targets due to the continued opposition of the people, especially women, to the inoculation

Another LHW, Saleema Bibi, said mostly women had been afraid of the vaccination after the last year death of a woman in Bisham THQ Hospital was falsely attributed to the administration of Covid-19 vaccine to her.

She, however, said better awareness through media campaign was increasing inoculation rates in the district.

When contacted, coordinator of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation in Shangla Dr Mohammad Hussain confirmed the people’s misconceptions about Covid-19 vaccination and said fake news were mostly spread on social media.

He said conspiracy theories about the vaccine stopped health workers from achieving the inoculation targets but the mandatory production of vaccination card for travel forced many people to get the vaccine shots.

Dr Bilal Khan, focal person for Covid-19 vaccination in Shangla, said snowfall, hard terrains and ‘silent’ refusals also hampered vaccination drive.

“Many people make excuses to avoid inoculation and some even offer resistance as vaccinators don’t have security,” he said.

The focal person also declared vaccinating schoolchildren and seminarians a challenge and said students didn’t have Form B for identification and registration.

He complained that most elderly people didn’t possess computerised identity cards.

Dr Bilal said conspiracy theories about Covid-19 vaccine were on their way out due to the growing public awareness and restrictions.

He said in the upcoming campaign, 13,000 people would be administered vaccine, especially second dose.

According to the local health department, 463,267 Covid-19 vaccine doses have so far been administered to the people in the district with 757,810 population against 531,726 vaccination target.

A total of 290,893 residents got first dose only, 172,120 two doses and 254 booster shots.

Published in Dawn, February 27th, 2022