Call for religious leaders to step up
FIJI born Australian Professor Satish Chand has called on religious leaders to push for COVID-19 vaccination and encourage their members to get vaccinated.
Prof Chand, who is a professor of finance in the School of Business at the University of
New South Wales based at the Australian Defence
Force Academy in Canberra, said this was imperative in order to get out of the pandemic crisis.
In an interview with Pacific journalists who virtually attended the Covering the COVID Economy Crisis session, Prof Chand said the good news was that nearly every Pacific island country has secured sufficient supply of vaccines.
“That’s excellent news. The bad news is that we are not making too much progress in getting the vaccine into the arms of our populations,” he said.
“I mean yes, some if it is capacity constraints, in terms of having the health workers to push the vaccines out.
“But there is also some scaremongering that is going on. And I strongly appeal to our religious leaders.”
He said if religious leaders stood up to the people in the church, the leaders out there in the temples and in the mosques really pushed for vaccination, then we would have an opportunity.
“So if I was to appeal to our religious leaders, I’d say to come out there to the forefront and take the lead in getting people onboard with regards to vaccination because unless and until that gets done, we have got very little chance of getting out of this crisis.”