Community ‘foot soldiers’ in Soweto helping pensioners get jabs

When Esther Dhlamini went to collect her pension in Soweto, she was surprised to find a local bishop on hand to soothe her fears about Covid-19 vaccination and register her for the jab on his mobile phone.

Community “foot soldiers” like the bishop are among numerous initiatives being scrambled across South Africa to tackle a digital divide that threatens to hit vaccine take-up among people without internet access – including many pensioners.“I was afraid to get vaccinated and didn’t know how to,” said Dhlamini, 71, outside the Boxer supermarket where she goes each month to pick up her R1 900 pension grant.

“But then the bishop showed me a video of him getting vaccinated and he’s still alive, so I let him sign me up,” she said. Tens of thousands of pensioners are being targeted by partnerships between authorities, charities and churches to ensure it is not only the rich or digitally connected who are immunised against Covid-19 in Africa’s worst-hit country.

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As daily cases rise, progress on the national inoculation drive has been slow, and campaigners fear people living in rural areas, or those without an internet connection or private medical aid may be left behind altogether. So far, 3.7% of SA’s roughly 58 million people have received at least one vaccine dose, according to a Reuters tally, with only healthcare workers and the over-60s currently eligible.

“We’re having very elitist conversations around Covid-19,” said Thami Nkosi, interim pro-grammes manager at Right-2Know, which works to improve access to public information campaigns.“We’re using complicated numbers, maps and information, it’s almost like certain sections of society – the illiterate, the elderly, those without tech access – are being forgotten,” Nkosi added. Almost all of the 38 million South Africans – or nearly two-thirds of the population – who have internet access use their mobile phones to get online, according to online data portal Statista.

But data is expensive in SA, with broadband research company Cable.co.uk ranking it in the upper half of global prices. Several health department vaccination initiatives have sought to take advantage of the country’s relatively high rates of connectivity The bishop showed a video of him getting vaccinated, and he’s still alive, so I let him sign me up.

Esther Dhlamini Soweto pensioners and mobile phone usage while saving costs for users. It has launched a toll-free hot-line and free quick code, or unstructured supplementary service data (USSD), to help register those without data or the internet for vaccination. Officials from the department of health were not immediately available for comment on how widely used such services have been. But their partnership with the SA Council of Churches (SACC) – a forum uniting church members and organisations – and branches of Boxer supermarkets across the country has so far reached at least 120 000 people.

Volunteers approach pension-ers as they wait in line, speak to them about coronavirus vaccine myths and misinformation, and if they agree – they register them on their phones for a vaccination appointment.“By initiating this campaign, we had only one objective in mind: to ultimately assist the government’s efforts to vaccinate as many of our citizens as quickly as possible,” said Ian Bamber, a Box-er spokesperson.

Bishop Shadrack Moloi, president of the Council of African Independent Churches, a SACC member, said churches can be “an amazing resource” in the vaccination drive.“It’s important for churches to get involved because we have a close connection to the community,” Moloi said.

Other projects have included distributing 200 000 flyers with vaccine information across the country and social media campaigns encouraging younger South Africans to help register their grandparents. A truck coordinated by the provincial health departments and Unicef has been screening videos of people sharing Covid-19 stories in local languages while helping them register for the vaccine. Networks of volunteers, such as CovidComms SA, are sharing infographic videos to explain the different ways to register.

Getting the elderly to sign up for vaccination is just the first step, said Jane Simmonds, research manager at the SA Medical Research Council. – Reuter