KARACHI:
It is hard for senior citizens like me to commute and travel across the city. Institutions and infrastructures are not made to cater to our needs and therefore we struggle at finishing tasks and running errands. The advent of the pandemic has made things worse as there is a constant fear of getting infected by the virus.
In the light of the situation, I registered for the Covid vaccination and thereafter received a message on my mobile phone directing me to report to a polyclinic hospital on a certain day. I arrived at the hospital at 2:30pm and found out that the vaccination centre was closed, even though working hours are till 5pm. I, much like many others, was expecting that the task would be undertaken on a war footing. But no urgency was visible. To make matters worse, my wife received a separate call telling here to appear at a different centre, far away from home, and on a different date. This was a huge cause for inconvenience as I had to take the help of a relative who could drive me and my wife to our respective vaccination centres.
It seems to me that the health department is unaware of the difficulties that senior citizens face. Authorities really need to shift gear, otherwise at such a pace it will require a decade to vaccinate people and achieve herd immunity.
Shabbir Ahmad
Islamabad
Published in The Express Tribune, March 14th, 2021.
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