The Union Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry earlier this week asked the Health and Family Welfare Ministry to ensure that caregivers of persons with disabilities (PwD) are vaccinated against COVID-19 at the same centre as the PwD on priority basis.
The Department of Empowerment of PwD (DEPwD) under the Ministry wrote in an office memorandum on July 7 that it had received an email from Anjlee Agarwal, a PwD, requesting the facility.
“Caregivers are required to come in close proximity with persons with disabilities for providing support services to PwDs to enable them to perform activities of daily living. As such, it is important to ensure vaccination of such caregivers alongside persons with disabilities,” the DEPwD wrote.
The Health Ministry was asked to issue instructions to all Central and State healthcare authorities and vaccination centres to this effect.
Ms. Agarwal, an activist and wheelchair user, said she had to go to a West Delhi school for the first dose with her two caregivers.
“To my utter shock, upon reaching the Tilak Nagar school, the people at the vaccination centre refused to vaccinate my caregivers with the excuse that they were not disabled and the vaccination drive was organised for PwD,” she said.
She said her caregivers were finally able to get the vaccine after the intervention of senior officials.
“I’m a person with high support needs. There are other PwD who cannot raise their voice like I did or write to the authorities. We remain at risk if the people assisting us are not vaccinated. And many PwD are at greater risk of severe disease if they get infected,” she said, adding that an order or instructions to vaccination centres was the need of the hour.
