Vaccine-mobile brings COVID-19 shots to Michigan mosque, helping to convince the hesitant
DETROIT — Mirvat Kadouh couldn’t sit idle. There have been too many funerals, too much sickness, disinformation and fear.
Kadouh, vice chair of the Islamic Center of America’s Board of Trustees, knew that COVID-19 vaccines have the potential to deliver not only Michigan’s Muslim community out of the pandemic, but the nation and the world.
She had to find a way to spread the word that the vaccines are safe, and to bring the shots to the thousands of members of her mosque, the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, one of the largest in North America.
And she knew she had to do it quickly.
Ramadan, the most sacred month for Muslims, is fast approaching, and it comes with strict fasting rules.
“We are trying to vaccinate as many people as we can before Ramadan,” Kadouh said early Monday morning, spreading a plastic tablecloth over a folding table in a large conference room, where the Islamic Center’s first COVID-19 vaccine clinic was about to begin.
She helped to organize the clinic in partnership with Henry Ford Health System’s Global Health Initiative, arranging for 300
Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines to be delivered in a van to the doorstep of the mosque, along with trained medical personnel from Henry Ford to give the shots and answer questions.
“During Ramadan, nothing should enter your body” from dawn to sunset, Kadouh explained. “It’s supposed to be a total fast, and some people feel that if you take an injection, something is entering your body.”
However, imams and other religious leaders at the mosque have been trying to get out the message that it isn’t forbidden to get a COVID-19 vaccine during the holy month, which begins April 12.
“It’s really important to educate the community that it is OK,” she said.
It’s a big job, Kadouh explained, especially in a community where disinformation and vaccine hesitancy swirl.
Mona Hamood, 59, of Sterling Heights, was the first to get a shot Monday morning. Having the clinic at the mosque, she said, was key to reaching into a community that for many involves a language barrier and fear.
“To have it endorsed here, to have it represented where people feel safe, I think, is so important,” said Hamood, who also serves on the Islamic Center’s board.
“No one’s immune from this COVID, right? It’s hit the community hard and people are scared; they’re scared both ways. They’re scared of getting (COVID-19), and they’re scared of taking the vaccine.”
When Henry Ford agreed to partner with the Islamic Center,
Kadouh went to work scheduling appointments for members, giving out her phone number and taking names to register them.
She scheduled 250 people for this first event, but asked Henry Ford to bring 300 doses because she knew that as word got out, more people would come and ask for shots.
“We don’t want anybody to leave disappointed,” she said. The extra vaccines went quickly. By noon, she was already filling slots for the following week’s clinic.
Before the sun came up Monday, 300 doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines were loaded into a white Ford Transit van at Henry Ford’s Detroit headquarters.
Tony Eljallad, senior project manager for the health system, got behind the wheel, started the van and drove west on I-94 toward the mosque.
“I believe I was destined to do this,” said Eljallad, senior project manager for the Global Health Initiative. “My family left Lebanon because there was a civil war going on, and for a better life for me.”
He became the first in his family to graduate from college, and went on to serve in the National Guard and committed his life to trying to help people in disadvantaged communities get access to health care — first working in metro Detroit’s LGBTQ community, and since the pandemic began, trying to bring COVID-19 tests and now vaccines to neighborhoods, churches and, on this day, a mosque.
“I feel like God put me here to serve, and help our community,” he said. “We bring it to where people are, which is the mosque and we work with religious leaders in addressing the hesitancy toward the vaccine,” Eljallad said.
“There’s a lot of fearmongering happening and I think this is not just the Arab American community. It’s in a lot of other communities as well. You know, the same groups that are anti-flu vaccine or anti-vaccine in general also happen to be ANTI-COVID vaccinations well.”
He unloaded the van, bringing supplies into the mosque
Monday, and helped in the clinic as nurses drew vaccine from vials into syringes, and filled out immunization cards and set up laptops to register people for their shots.
Inside, Diane Hazime, a volunteer at the Islamic Center, 57, of Dearborn Heights stood at a table by the entrance of the mosque, directing people and helping them sign in for their appointments.
Many Arab Americans, she said, lack knowledge about the vaccines, she said, especially if English is a second language.
“That’s why they’re scared to take these vaccines. They’re listening to Whatsapp messages that say, ‘You’re going to turn into a monkey if you take the vaccine’ or ‘There’s a chip in the vaccine.’
“I don’t think there’s enough Arabic literature about the vaccines.”
As someone who can speak and read in English, Hazime said, “I can go read about the Pfizer vaccine, the Moderna vaccine and realize they’re really the same technology. I can read about Johnson & Johnson, and see it’s an older technology, except with some newer technology injected. But they can’t read that.
“So we need that Arabic literature; we don’t have that.”
It also puts many members of the community at a disadvantage because they can’t navigate the websites to register for COVID-19 vaccines in the way English speakers can.
And for immigrants who came to the United States from countries with unstable governments, there also is a mistrust in government authority. Some also have told her they’re afraid the vaccines aren’t safe because they came to market so quickly.
“People don’t know the history of pandemics or vaccines, she said. “They don’t realize that every penny we had was thrown at this vaccine and we stopped everything else. They don’t know all that. So I think that’s what’s stopping them from taking the vaccine.”
Hazime said she made about 100 phone calls to convince people to come to the clinic at the mosque on Monday.
“I had people who were elderly that don’t have a ride,” she said. “I had to find them a ride. People were calling their neighbors ... while I was on hold on the phone because they didn’t have anyone to bring them.”
So Hazime started organizing rides, and making arrangements to get them to the mosque.
“My sister had COVID two weeks ago, and my sister’s a breast cancer survivor,” Hazime said. “It was not pretty, and I couldn’t go help her or anything. All I could do was buy groceries and put them on the porch.
The vaccine, she said, is better than the disease.
“People need to see that,” Hazime said. “They don’t understand.”