A collaborative healthcare and community effort is ensuring kaumātua at marae and aged care facility residents and staff are the next focus of the Covid-19 vaccination rollout.
Bay of Plenty District Health Board Pou Tikanga Graham Cameron says working with iwi and kaupapa Māori providers to protect community elders was a major focus.
'With reference to our kuia and kaumātua here in the Bay of Plenty, the korero we've had with our iwi and Māori communities has clearly demonstrated the concern they have for their elders,” says Graham.
'So that's a key driver in the work we're doing, we're protecting our marae and protecting our elders as they're such an important aspect in the functioning of our communities.”
Graham says anticipated changes to the cold chain advice would give some greater flexibility and open up potential options for reaching more remote communities.
'There's new advice in the pipeline for the cold chain for the Covid-19 vaccine which will be really helpful for extending our campaign into those remote communities.
'For example, in Te Kaha the community facility there is committed to supporting the people of the East Coast. Facilities like that will help the more remote communities, for whom getting to sites such as Whakatāne Hospital would be that much more difficult.”
He says community buy-in is already high for the vaccination campaign.
'We're working hard with our communications. With Māori, face-to-face engagement, hearing messages from people they know and respect, such as kaumātua and kuia is what works and gives the vaccination message the biggest chance of success.”
BOPDHB chief medical officer Kate Grimwade.
Meanwhile, more than 700 people at Aged Residential Care facilities were vaccinated in the first week of the programme being rolled out there, says BOPDHB chief medical officer Kate Grimwade.
'We're taking the vaccine to our most vulnerable communities,” says Kate.
'We have contracted Cicada Healthcare, who are experienced with undertaking flu vaccination campaigns in the ARC sector, to undertake this vital work. They have vaccinators who are very experienced in the ARC environment and that work is continuing apace.
'More than 700 staff and residents received their initial vaccinations in the first week of the campaign, which started on Monday, April 19. The work started in the Western Bay of Plenty and will move to the Eastern Bay in the week beginning May 3.”
Kate says the rollout of the BOPDHB vaccination programme is designed to target the most at-risk and vulnerable communities early in the process.
'We started with our border workers, which here in the Bay is predominantly our Port staff. We've administered more than 1700 vaccination dosages to our Port staff and their whānau, and are following up with further rounds of vaccinations there. Since the end of March we've also been vaccinating our frontline healthcare workers in the community and our hospitals.
'Cicada Healthcare is vaccinating at our ARC facilities, but we also recognise that many of our older Māori may not be in an ARC, and more likely living with whānau. So we have been working with our iwi and Māori providers to vaccinate kaumātua at marae.”
Kate describes the vaccination programme rollout so far as an amazing team effort by everyone involved.
'We're working with local providers on local solutions, reaching out to the communities to see how we can best provide vaccination to them; to give the best protection we can for the people we serve.”
4 comments
Snail pace
Posted on 30-04-2021 12:41 | By Slim Shady
So much effort and time to persuade so few. If everyone needed so much persuasion and coaxing we would never get done. Just hurry it up a bit.
Sadly,...
Posted on 02-05-2021 13:45 | By morepork
the only way to "hurry it up a bit" would be to require people get vaccinated by Law. That would be a violation of Human Rights and then we would be moving to a real police state... (And we don't have enough vaccine to implement it anyway...)
@morepork
Posted on 02-05-2021 15:49 | By Slim Shady
Or they could pull their finger out and approve the other very safe and very effective vaccines that other countries are using and have been using for months.
Cam
Posted on 02-05-2021 18:58 | By Slim Shady
I’ve just sent my mate in the UK a clip of the Covid vaccine TV advert that’s just come out. It’s hilarious. His response was “are you vaccinating children in New Zealand”. Super patronising. Super funny. The advert that is.
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