TREK FOR PROTECTION

Doctors scale rockslides, invoke gods to vaccinate Himalayan villagers. Story and Pictures by Adnan Abidi in Malana, India

To visit the Indian village of Malana deep in the Himalayas, a Covid19 vaccination team scrambled over a landslide that had blocked the road the day before, scaled a retaining wall and then began a three-hour trek down and up a river valley.

Despite the hostile terrain, the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, where Malana is located, earlier this month became the first in India to administer at least one Covid vaccine dose to all its adults.

The steep topography was just one of the challenges overcome by health workers walking for hours or days to reach remote villages. Another was religious beliefs, as the tourism-dependent state immunised its roughly 5 million adults.

On Sept 14, a team of five led by district health officer Dr Atul Gupta set out to Malana to administer second doses of the vaccine.

Blocked by the landslide, they left their vehicle. With two blue vaccine boxes slung over their shoulders, they began to manoeuvre over the rubble, climb the wall and then walk to the trailhead leading to the village, accompanied by a Reuters photographer.

Before beginning the trek to the village, Gupta and his team placed the boxes onto a gondola connected to pulleys to carry the medicine across the river gorge that separates Malana from the road. That lightened their load considerably as they set off to cross the gorge which drops down about 100 metres.

During a rest break on the trek, Gupta said that to convince Malana’s 1,100 adults to take their first shots in August, its district chief had priests invoke a local Hindu deity. This helped health workers cover up to 700 people in three days, he said.

When Gupta’s team reached the village on Sept 14, nearly three dozen people, who had taken their first shots before the invocation, lined up to get their second shots just opposite an ancient temple to the deity.

“People were initially scared to take the vaccine, worried they would fall sick or die,” said village head Rajuram, who gave just one name, sitting by the carved wood and concrete walls of the temple. “Then I took it and others also mustered the courage.”

Jai Ram Thakur, the chief minister of Himachal Pradesh, attributes the state’s vaccination success to its village-to-village drive, its decision to involve local-level politicians, and the federal government’s push to prioritise immunisations in tourist hotspots.

India wants to vaccinate nearly all of its adults by December, having administered at least one dose to two-thirds of its people and two doses to less than a quarter as of early October. Thakur wants Himachal Pradesh to be the fastest state to reach the two-dose milestone, hopefully by November.

People were initially scared to take the vaccine, worried they would fall sick or die. Then I took it and others also mustered the courage

RAJURAM Malana village head

Buddhist monks stand atop a monastery at Komic village in Lahaul and Spiti district in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh. Despite the hostile terrain, the northern state became the first in India to administer at least one Covid vaccine dose to all its adults.

Malana village is home to about 1,100 adults, 700 of whom were persuaded to get Covid shots during the vaccination team’s first visit in August.

Nirma Devi and Phula Devi hold boxes containing Covishield vaccines in Kullu district in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, India.

Medical kits and boxes containing vaccines are transported via a pulley across a river gorge that separates Malana village from the nearest road.

Health worker Kamla Devi, 58, vaccinates a resident of Malana village in Kullu district.

Phula Devi, 30, carries boxes containing vaccine through the village.