Elderly in old age homes deprived of vaccination due to lack of Aadhaar card

Bengaluru: The elders abandoned by families, besides destitutes and dementia patients, continue to be deprived of vaccination shot due to the lack of an aadhaar card, even though the government had earlier issued fresh guidelines to vaccinate those who do not possess ID cards.

Representatives of old age and destitute homes have been approaching the state officials and BBMP to seek help to vaccinate these elders who are most vulnerable to the virus.

The Union ministry of health and family welfare had recently issued standard operating procedures to vaccinate nomads, prison inmates, inmates in mental health institutions, citizens in old age homes, roadside beggars, people in rehabilitation centres/camps and other eligible people. The ministry had directed the state governments to form district-level task forces to identify such people in each district who don’t possess any of the prescribed ID cards and vaccinate them.

However, the situation has not changed. For instance, Sandhya Suraksha, a facility for helpless elderly women in Anepalya, has 66 people. Most of them were saved from the streets by police and only a few are healthy.

CF Prasad, manager of the facility said, “We managed to get only 26 residents vaccinated last month. The remaining 40 women were denied the jab as they didn’t have an aadhaar card to prove their identity.”

Prasad said that some of these elders who suffer from dementia do not even remember their own names. The elderly women at the home have comorbidities due to which they are most likely to contract the infection. Thus, the caretakers are concerned for them and are in desperation to get them jabbed. But, the aadhaar hurdle has remained insurmountable.

Radha S Murthy, managing trustee of Nightingales Medical Trust says that a similar situation persists in most of the old age homes.

She said, “Government officials are insisting on aadhaar and sometimes some other identification documents to vaccinate the inmates. But in many cases, people who are rescued from the streets don’t possess any kind of identification papers. Even the police who bring some of them to us have no clue. Representatives of many centres have made an appeal to the authorities for a solution as ailing residents are extremely vulnerable to the virus. We are yet to hear from them.”

Sampath TD represents a consortium of relief organisations in Bengaluru working for the urban homeless. He has said that they have appealed to the BBMP to introduce an ID card on the lines of street vendors and ragpickers.

He said, “The homes can be inspected, and identity papers can be issued to inmates, especially the elderly. This will help them get the vaccine. We are still trying to convince the officials and are hopeful they will consider our requests soon as Covid cases in the city continue to remain high.”

BBMP officials said that the officers in charge of vaccination centres have been ordered to give vaccines after making a record of the details procured from the CoWin portal or the Aarogya Setu app. Currently, inoculation without a government identification is not encouraged.