How will India vaccinate 1.3 billion people? Its army of auxiliary nurses and midwives know

Name: India trains workers to handle Covid-19 mass vaccination programme
Uploaded: 2020-12-24T03:00:14.000Z
Duration: 2 min 15 s
Description: India trains workers to handle Covid-19 mass vaccination programme

These thousands of vaccinators form the first point of ground-level contact in the country’s health care system, and are ready to take on the coronavirus

But immunisation drives in India can be a fraught process, with distrust of both the vaccines and those who administer them common

Reading Time:4 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

02:15

India trains workers to handle Covid-19 mass vaccination programme

Kunal Purohit

Published: 11:00am, 24 Dec 2020Updated: 12:13pm, 28 Dec 2020

In New Delhi, the countdown to a vaccine has begun.

Last week, the Narendra Modi government announced that it was planning to vaccinate 300 million people against the coronavirus by June. The same week, three different Covid-19 vaccine developers – Pfizer, Oxford-AstraZeneca and domestically developed Covaxin – applied for emergency authorisations so their vaccines could be used immediately.

But even though approvals won’t be given until the vaccines pass a series of safety protocols, Modi has said India is just weeks away from starting its inoculation drive.

At the heart of these moves is a country grappling with a core question: how do you vaccinate 1.3 billion people? For an answer, the example of Pratibha Shirke could offer some insight.

Women like Seema Dhabade, an accredited social health activist (ASHA) worker, play a crucial role in running India’s immunisation programmes by going door to door, encouraging children and expectant mothers to get vaccinated. Photo: Kunal Purohit

For 32 years, Shirke has walked long distances, climbed mountains and crossed rivulets in Raigad district, a little more than 70km away from India’s gleaming commercial capital, Mumbai.

The 56-year-old is one of the thousands of auxiliary nurses and midwives (ANMs) that form the first point of ground-level contact in India’s health care system. ANMs, among other their other tasks, are the vaccinators who drive India’s massive Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP), one of the largest health programmes in the world.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x