The objective of the campaign is to engage with key stakeholders, join hands with district authorities, and run a comprehensive public education program that addresses awareness gaps in understanding the benefits of vaccination
Healthcare Federation of India-NATHEALTH and Centre for Knowledge & Development, (CKD) an organisation incubated by IPE Global has announced the launch of a public education campaign, “Win with Vaccines” to build COVID-19 vaccine confidence in five low coverage districts across Assam and Haryana.
These districts include South Salmara Mankachar, Baksa, Chirang and Udalguri in Assam and Nuh in Haryana, having the lowest rate of vaccination in the states. While India has administered a total of 200 million vaccines, only 9.79 crore citizens have been administered the booster dose till 4th August 2022. Overall, vaccination numbers have dropped in certain pockets of the country, a gap that NATHEALTH in collaboration with Centre for knowledge and Development, Wipro GE Healthcare, Charnock Hospital and Fresenius Medical Care aim to address with this campaign.
The objective of the campaign is to engage with key stakeholders, join hands with district authorities, and run a comprehensive public education program that addresses awareness gaps in understanding the benefits of vaccination. The programme will use effective monitoring and impact assessment tools to measure progress and a multi-pronged communication approach will be adopted, blending traditional and new age mediums. It will leverage local talent groups, theatre artists, influencers, youth icons, community and women leaders for maximising the campaign outreach. On-ground interventions will include dissemination of IEC/BCC material and tool kits during regional festivals, across bus stops, health and wellness centers, schools, community gatherings and local haats to maximise the outreach and recall.
Speaking on the initiative, Dr Shravan Subramanyam, President, NATHEALTH and Managing Director, Wipro GE Healthcare said, “We are happy to join hands with Centre for Knowledge and Development for this initiative to enable a wider adoption of vaccines. India is seeing a dip in vaccinations and citizen education and awareness will be fundamental to accelerate adoption. Understanding the need for vaccination and breaking free from the misconceptions will be key to enable behavior change and drive confidence in vaccines in low coverage areas”.
Seema Gupta, Advisor, Centre for Knowledge and Development (CKD) said, “The joint campaign will address issues of diffidence in vaccination by debunking myths and misconceptions, engage government and private stakeholders for increasing coverage of COVID-19 vaccines. The task of immunising the entire population must be completed at the earliest to eliminate or minimise the risk of a new variant of the virus catching the population on the wrong foot. As part of the exercise, CKD-NATHEALTH campaign will also focus on the Left out, drop out and resistant (LODOR) populations across all age groups to raise awareness, build confidence to complete the COVID 19 vaccination protocols.”