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Don’t hoard medicines, resume help : Nadda to BJP workers
This comes amid a surge in Covid-19 cases and an increase in the demand for hospital beds and medicines. The Centre on Monday opened up the vaccination for everyone above 18 from May 1
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief JP Nadda has asked the party’s state unit heads to ensure that the cadre at the district level distributes masks, sanitisers and encourages those eligible to get vaccinated, functionaries aware of the matter said.
This comes amid a surge in Covid-19 cases and an increase in the demand for hospital beds and medicines. The Centre on Monday opened up the vaccination for everyone above 18 from May 1.
A state unit chief said Nadda has set a target of “mera booth, corona mukt [my booth, corona free]” for them and identified a three-pronged approach. “First, to ensure compliance with Covid protocol by distributing masks and sanitisers and ensuring there is no vaccine hesitancy.”
The state units have been asked to carry out special programmes in the rural areas to encourage vaccination. “We have noticed vaccine hesitancy in rural areas particularly. For instance, if we have a capacity for 50 lakh [five million] doses, only 30-35 lakh [three to 3.5 million] people show up. [The] places where we carried out special drives, the numbers went up. So, this will be scaled up,” said the person quoted above.
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Two other functionaries, who attended his virtual meeting with state functionaries on Sunday, said Nadda underlined the need to set up helplines in every district to facilitate hospital admissions and help those under home quarantine with the supply of essentials.
“...[Nadda] said the cadre must resume relief work to help people in need. When the lockdown was first announced last year, the cadre had taken on the responsibility of providing food and medicines to people in need. Now as the cases of Covid 19 are steadily going up, he said there is a need to help people connect with doctors and get access to healthcare,” said the state unit chief quoted above.
The functionaries were specifically asked not to hoard or procure medicines, but to help people with information on their availability and in case of need to ferry them to hospitals.
“He explained that it is the government’s job to procure medicines such as Remdesivir that is in high demand. He said party functionaries should not try to procure the drug as it could be construed as hoarding. They can, however, help people with information,” said a second functionary.
The Maharashtra government last week accused the BJP of trying to procure Remdesivir without informing it. The BJP maintained it was procuring the drug for the state government for further supply.
In March last year, Nadda tasked the party cadre to feed over 50 million people during the Covid-19 lockdown.
