At least two Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) clinics have allegedly refused to vaccinate elderly, bedridden persons at home and asked the families to take them to vaccination centres, in violation of the civic body’s rule on home vaccination.
At least two Kolkatans have told The Telegraph that KMC ward officials have turned down their plea to vaccinate their elderly bedridden family members at home.
Mayor Firhad Hakim told this newspaper on Wednesday that if a bedridden person was refused vaccination at home, the family should get in touch with him on his WhatsApp number.
“We are vaccinating the bedridden at home. If any KMC official has said that we are not vaccinating at home, he or she has not said the right thing. I would request families with bedridden members to WhatsApp me the details. My office will ensure that they get vaccinated,” Hakim said.
The mayor’s WhatsApp number is 9830037493. A family who wants a bedridden member to be vaccinated at home should provide a certificate from a doctor stating that the person is bedridden and cannot visit a clinic for the jab. Some other documents, like an identity card, have to be submitted, too.
The two Kolkatans who had approached the KMC for home vaccination in December had a different tale to tell.
They were told to take the elderly to the ward clinic, where they would be vaccinated in their cars. Ward officials told the families that they would not have to wait in a queue for the shot.
“We have a 90-year-old who is fully bedridden. He has not stepped out for years. When we went to a KMC health clinic in the middle of December, we were told that vaccinating someone at home was not allowed under the protocol,” said a family member of the nonagenarian, a resident of Gariahat in south Kolkata.
“A few days back, I read a news report that someone was vaccinated at home by the KMC. I was surprised,” the family member said.
A 93-year-retired professor of English, a resident of Galiff Street in north Kolkata, had to be taken to a health centre with great difficulty, and much to the inconvenience of the man, after officials at a KMC health centre said vaccinating someone at home was not allowed.
“The official I spoke to asked me to take my father to the health centre. He had to be hauled like a sack of potato and put on a stretcher and taken to the centre. But the KMC staff was prompt in administering the vaccine and we were not made to wait at all. Still, it was difficult for him to go there,” said the man’s daughter.
What came as a surprise to many who were told that home vaccination was not allowed was a tweet by the KMC at 12.33pm on January 14, announcing that a 92-year-old woman had been vaccinated at home.
“If vaccination at home is allowed, it should be properly communicated to all ward or borough-level health officials of the KMC,” said a family member of the 90-year-old man.