Panna (Madhya Pradesh): Paanah, 31, developed high fever and cold some time mid-April, as did her husband and one-year-old malnourished child.
As a labourer in a diamond quarry, she was used to bouts of weakness every few months. But this time, she said, it felt like her “entire body was overcome by pain”.
She checked in on her extended family, who all live a few feet away — everybody showed similar symptoms.
Soon enough, Paanah realised that almost every household in her village of Kalyanpur, in Madhya Pardesh’s Panna district, was down with the same fever-cold-body ache ailment.
The symptoms were unmistakably that of coronavirus, Panaah knew. But there’s no way she would have agreed to get tested, she said.
“I went to the mata mandir, pressed the idol’s feet and my pain went away. Other villagers did the same,” she said.
A combination of extreme poverty and misinformation has led to tribals in Panna district to stay away from hospitals and the Covid-19 vaccine.
Take Paanah, for instance. Like most others in this tribal-majority district, she works in diamond mines to earn a living.
But the spate of lockdowns — Madhya Pradesh was partially shut in April but is now under a strict lockdown until 24 May — has meant that daily wagers like Paanah have been left without jobs.
Many like her “are surviving on roti-namak alone”.
Moreover, her husband had an accident at the beginning of the lockdown last year. The couple says they haven’t even been able to make enough to feed their malnourished child.
“There’s no way I would have the money to afford treatment or a hospital bed,” she said, explaining why she didn’t want to get tested.
“Kya hi hota..mar jaate hum? Marna bhagwan ke haath mein hai (What’s the worst that would have happened? We would have died? Death is anyway in God’s hand,” she added.
Ram Avtar, another villager, said “everyone in the village had it”.
“No one wanted to get tested. If there were actual tests, at least 250 people would’ve turned out to be positive,” he said. “But it got fine by itself. Some took jadi booti (Ayurvedic herbs), some just rested.”
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‘If I die due to the vaccine…’
While the villagers claim all of them recovered without any treatment or even testing, they are angry at the prospect of having to get vaccinated.
Gulab Bai, 47, says she and a few other villagers were taken by an anganwadi worker to Panna town to get her shot last month. But she doesn’t want to go again for the second dose.
“I am not scared of coronavirus, I am scared of the vaccine,” she said.
“Hum sui ke haath se kyu marein…behtar hai bimari se apni maut marein (Why should I agree to die of the vaccine? It’s better to die a natural death due to the virus,” Gulab Bai added.
Many others in the village express the same fear of “death due to the vaccine”.
“I am very scared. If I die due to the vaccine, who will take care of my kids?” asked Parvati Gaur, a labourer.
When asked the basis of her fears, she said, “I have heard of people dying… Not here but at far away places. I am not sure if it’s true but that’s what I have heard.”
Misinformation rife in these parts
Anganwadi workers in Panna blame the vaccine hesitancy on misinformation in these parts.
“No one here believes corona needs to be tested or treated properly,” said Durgesh Yadav, an anganwadi worker in Panna. “I keep telling them about vaccination but they don’t ever sign up. They say all of these are rumours and they are also scared of the side effects.”
Health activists say that the tribal labourers need special attention when it comes to vaccines, because they are especially vulnerable to Covid-19.
“Many of these adivasi labourers work day and night, and have grown anaemic. Malnutrition is a huge problem among many of their children. This makes the section very vulnerable to Covid and special attention needs to be paid to them,” said Ravikant Pathak, community mobiliser at Prithvi Trust, an NGO that works for women and children health in Panna.
“They weren’t as affected in the first surge because the virus was mostly limited to cities but that’s not true anymore,” he added.
Sanjay Kumar Mishra, the Panna District Magistrate, said there was vaccine hesitancy in “some villages”.
“We have teams on the field trying to educate people on vaccines; it will require concerted effort to encourage people to take vaccines,” Mishra told ThePrint.
(Edited by Arun Prashanth)
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