33% of 60+ Mumbai slum dwellers wary of vaccine: Survey

MUMBAI: In the growing anti-vaccine din, eight out of 10 slum-dwellers surveyed around

Cuffe Parade

said they would be willing to take the vaccine against the Covid-19-causing coronavirus if and when it becomes available.


However, a closer look at the

survey results

showed that a third of the 60-plus residents were not in favour of vaccination. One in four housewives said she wouldn’t want to take the vaccine, according to the survey, perhaps the first of its kind in slums.

This is unfortunate because the 60-plus age group is most vulnerable to Covid-19 and mothers mould their families’ decisions, said Dr Nishant Kumar, founder of the NGO Eyebetes Foundation that conducted the survey among 1,352 residents.

Incidentally, a sero-survey done in this area, that is the Cuffe Parade slums of Machimar Nagar,

Ambedkar Nagar

, Ganesh Murthy Nagar part 1 & 3 and

Geeta Nagar

, in October found that 75% of those surveyed had antibodies to Covid-19.

“It is reassuring that 8 in 10 slum residents are willing to be vaccinated. Similar surveys in Europe, South Africa and

Brazil

reported acceptance rates ranging between 50 and 60%,” said the doctor.

Online surveys done in India too have shown growing resistance to vaccination. A recent survey by LocalCircles, a social media platform, found that only three out of every 10 Indians want to take the Covid-19 vaccine when it becomes available. The remaining 70% of the participants in a national survey said they would not rush to take the vaccine The reason for vaccine hesitancy range from ‘herd immunity among Indians’ to ‘the worst of the pandemic being over’ to ‘side-effects of the vaccine’.