Change blows away vaccine hesitancy

Vadodara: Winds of change are blowing strongly among those who showed resistance towards getting the Covid-19 vaccination so far. Doctors, religious heads and opinion makers are working overtime to ensure that no one remains without vaccine.
The Baroda Muslim Doctors Association (BMDA) that had set an example by starting Covid care and treatment facilities across the state, is now taken the cudgels of ensuring hundred percent vaccination too. Awareness campaigns and vaccination camps have been started in different areas of the city to ensure healthy vaccination drive.
And if the figures are anything to go by, these camps regularly surpass the numbers at other camps in the city. On Sunday, around 1,400 persons were vaccinated at a mosque in the Tandalja area of the city.
Vaccination in the city had been seeing a downturn for quite some time, but that has been arrested. Groups like BMDA have come together to work on vaccination. Dr Mohammed Hussain, president of BMDA, said that the association had coordinated efforts for around 50 such camps. “People like us, clerics and others were the first to take the vaccine. People started becoming aware of the vaccine and turn up in large numbers at these camps,” said Hussain.
Hussain said that a camp in a dargah in the Memon Colony area witnessed people coming from Halol, Silvassa and Vapi for vaccination. “The dargah has devotees across the state and when it called upon them to get vaccinated, they came here,” said Hussain. He added that the camps have regularly been vaccinating 700 or more people these days.