Overall, around 1.3 lakh persons have got the first dose of the vaccine in Kolhapur city while 84,666 have got both doses till July 23. The Kolhapur Municipal Corporation has so far administered the first dose of Covid vaccine to 2,116 persons belonging to special groups — differently-abled people, prisoners, homeless persons, transgenders, leprosy-affected people.
While 950 differently-abled persons have got the first dose till mid-July, another 699 prisoners have got the vaccine shot.
Overall, around 1.3 lakh persons have got the first dose of the vaccine in Kolhapur city while 84,666 have got both doses till July 23.
The municipality is also focusing on the ANC population and slum dwellers through tie-ups with NGOs and information education and communication activities
“While our first priority is to prevent waterborne diseases, once the water recedes the teams will conduct a house to house survey and plan ahead. In areas that are not flood affected the vaccination drive is being ramped up. We are coordinating with UNICEF and Shelter Associates in Pune. Special camps are being conducted for persons in slum areas -as there is a vulnerable population here,” Kadambari Balkawade, Kolhapur municipal corporation commissioner told The Indian Express.
Shelter Associates, an NGO that operates in several Maharashtra districts, is taking a data-driven approach to identify and inoculate eligible beneficiaries.
“There are 57 slums with 15,000 families and ours is a data-based driven role of creating data and knowing exact numbers of vaccines that will be required and mobilising people to get the jabs,” said Pratima Joshi, founder of Shelter Associates.
What aids this data-driven community-centred approach is their five-year-long project where more than 4000 household toilets were built in Kolhapur.
“Hence slum dwellers know us and we have also helped several families get independent digital addresses via our Plus Codes project in Kolhapur.
“Now we have appended a questionnaire that records a detailed set of questions on how many vaccinations done in the slums, how many got one or both doses and different age groups that may have benefited,” said Joshi, adding that this will help create a database to ensure that each family in the slum gets vaccinated.
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards.
