Tickets to urge vaccine uptake

NORTH Queensland’s Indigenous community are being encouraged to get vaccinated, with Townsville Aboriginal and Islanders Health Service (TAIHS) offering limited free NRL tickets in exchange for the first jab.

With concerns much of the North Queensland community are too relaxed about the threat of Covid-19, TAIHS is ramping up its vaccination push.

Acting general manager for clinical services and practice manager of the TAIHS Garbutt clinic Samara Dargan said that Covid-19 would come to Townsville and the community needed to be prepared for whatever variant it was.

“We’re getting about 40 patients each day,” Ms Dargan said. “We have humour in what arm do we want to choose, are we going the left arm, right arm, and it just makes that safe place to be calm because sometimes it can be a little bit overwhelming and a little bit scary getting any vaccination,” she said.

“I think with the Covid-19 vaccination and it being a health pandemic, it’s just that little bit more scary.”

Arthur Patterson, who was the first person to get jabbed on Thursday, scored a ticket to Saturday night’s NRL game in Mackay. Tickets were also available for the Friday night Mackay game.

The National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health

Organisation and NRL helped secure the tickets for TAIHS to encourage more Indigenous people to be vaccinated.

Mr Patterson said getting the ticket to the Penrith Panthers versus Parramatta Eels game was a bonus.

“It’s more important to get the vaccine, but getting a free ticket was a nice bonus,” Mr Patterson said.

“I think it’s important (to get vaccinated) because I see too many people being relaxed about it. If you don’t take the precaution, it’s your fault if you get sick.”

TAIHS chief executive Stephen Hagan said the organisation was investing a lot in getting the Indigenous population in the region vaccinated.

“Nationally, we’re one of the lowest communities to be vaccinated,” he said.

“We want to have an intensive three-month program of really raising the vaccination … to upwards of 70 or 80 per cent.

“Ideally, we’d like to get to 90 per cent … so we want to get to all the schools and get to the communities.”

Mr Hagan said billboards would be rolled out across the city.

“It’s a costly exercise, but we want people to know that it’s safe to be vaccinated,” he said.

“One thing that has helped us is that, the patients, if they know their doctor has been vaccinated and the nurses have even vaccinated, that’s encouraging and it helps,” Mr Hagan said.