Rural door-to-door drive
Initiative by NGO aimed at vaccinating bedridden, disabled in interior areas
KUALA LUMPUR: Wearing personal protective equipment while carrying an icebox and other items, a team of volunteers and medical frontliners stepped out of their van on a narrow kampung road in Beranang, Selangor, on a hot Tuesday morning recently.
It was uncomfortably humid and the equipment they carried was heavy, but that trip on July 6 was necessary to inoculate bedridden and disabled people – those who were unable to go to vaccination centres.
It was the first day of a door-to-door Covid19 vaccination programme organised by medical non-governmental organisations (NGO) such as Mercy Malaysia, the Islamic Medical Association of Malaysia Response and Relief Team and the National Cancer Society, aided by the Social Welfare Department and the Health Ministry.
The success of the programme required expansion to other hard-to-reach communities, such as those in interior areas, Orang Asli communities, the stateless and refugees.
“Today is very important to us because we would like to gauge the work flow and what the challenges are so we can work it out,” said head of Mercy Malaysia health unit Dr Mohammad Iqbal Omar.
The team expects to repeat the vaccination process for 22,000 homebound people as well as their caregivers in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. Mohammad Iqbal said inoculations will continue until all are covered, Bernama reported.
Despite the slow start to the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme, mass vaccination efforts have increased in the past few weeks, surpassing the daily 400,000 dose target as of July 12. However, infection numbers have also been breaking records, with 13,215 daily cases reported on July 15.
Malaysia plans to vaccinate at least 80% of adults, including non-citizens, in order to return to some semblance of normalcy.
For now, the door-to-door programme is for Malaysian citizens registered with the Social Welfare Department, and not necessarily via the MySejahtera app.
Government agencies and NGO are currently reaching out to people in the interiors, Orang Asli villages and rural areas to create awareness and register them for vaccination.
Mobile centre have also been deployed to the areas to administer the shots.
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and local NGO Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas, Malaysia has one of the highest numbers of stateless people in the region. At last count, there were 12,400 stateless people in Peninsular Malaysia alone.
The International Organisation for Migration puts the figure of migrants in Sabah and Sarawak at between one and three million, with more than 170,000 refugees registered with UNHCR.