[ad_1]
SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) – Samia Dridi, who was born, raised and works as a nurse in Saint-Denis, fears for her impoverished city, recalling how the coronavirus has blazed a particularly deadly path through the diverse area to the north de Paris, a burial place of the kings of France buried in a majestic basilica.
Dridi and her sister accompanied their frail 92-year-old mother of Algerian origin to a vaccination center for the first of two COVID-19 vaccines days after it opened last week for people over 75.
As bureaucracy, consent requirements and supply issues slowed the rollout of vaccination in France across the country, the Seine-Saint-Denis region is faced with particular challenges to fight against the virus and to vaccinate people in turn.
It is the poorest region in metropolitan France and has seen the country’s highest increase in mortality last spring, in large part because of COVID-19. Up to 75 percent of the population are immigrants or have immigrant roots, and its residents speak some 130 different languages. Health care is below average, with two to three times fewer hospital beds than other regions and a higher rate of chronic disease. Many are essential workers in supermarkets, public sanitation and health care.
The coronavirus was initially widely seen as the great equalizer, infecting the rich and the poor. But studies have since shown that some people are more vulnerable than others, including the elderly, people with other long-term illnesses and the poor, often living on the margins of mainstream society, such as immigrants who do not. do not speak French.
Dridi, 56, a nurse for more than three decades, feels relieved that there is currently “no significant evolution” of the virus in her town. But she doesn’t forget what happened when the pandemic first hit.
“We had entire families with COVID,” she says. Many have several generations living together in small apartments, which experts see as a common aggravating factor in the area.
Despite these grim memories, local officials face particular challenges in bringing vaccines to a population where many do not speak French, lack access to regular medical care and, as in much of France, are wary of the safety of the vaccine.
Next month, a bus will cross the region, including visiting street markets, to provide information on immunization. In addition, some forty “vaccination ambassadors” speaking several languages must be trained to raise awareness, from March, about vaccinations as well as the “fake news” that surrounds them.
A typical example is Youssef Zaoui, 32, an Algerian living in Saint-Denis.
“I heard that the vaccination was very dangerous, more than the virus,” said Zaoui, sitting in the shade of the basilica. His proof that he doesn’t have to worry about the virus: the butcher down the street and the man selling cigarettes nearby. They were there at the beginning of March “and they are still there. … I’m still here, ”he said.
Is there a chance that the vaccine could turn the tide on the inequalities reflected in mortality statistics for the region?
“Before the vaccine becomes a great equalizer, everyone must be vaccinated,” said Patrick Simon, co-author of a study last June on the vulnerability of minorities in Seine-Saint-Denis to COVID-19. But he said the challenges for marginalized communities to access health care continues, “So these inequalities will also be replicated for the vaccine.”
While the French health system is supposed to provide accessible medical treatment to all, bureaucratic demands and co-payments often scare new immigrants or the very poor. Government health guidelines do not always reach those outside the system.
As a nurse in a municipal health center, Dridi immediately sees the poverty which translates into vulnerability to the coronavirus.
“I give an injection, a sting, I put on a bandage… and some say, ‘I live in a car, I am in the street,’” she said.
This misery was not apparent at the vaccination center where Dridi’s mother was vaccinated – among 17 opened in the region last week and where the lucky ones in Saint-Denis, who live in private homes, were seen during a recent visit. Some made their way to the center on canes or held by an arm. A couple showed up on a scooter. Everyone was eager to get the vaccine.
They were among the luckiest. Nominations were reduced after the reduction in dose allocations of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, as elsewhere in France and Europe.
“I’m lucky to get the vaccine today,” said one woman, who then burst into tears. She was infected with COVID-19 during treatment at a private clinic in April and lost her mother in October to the virus after contracting it at a hospital where she was treated after a fall.
The woman, who declined to give her name, told Dridi and her sister to take care of their mother because “she is your treasure”.
For Dridi, seeing people die from COVID-19 can be a game-changer.
“Some people say no (get the vaccine) because they have no contact with death,” Dridi said. But death, “that’s what makes you react.”
[ad_2]
Source link