As the government tries to screen seven crore tribal people for sickle-cell disease (SCD) and attempts to create a data bank of tribal people’s health, Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda on Tuesday said there’s considerable suspicion in the target tribal population over why the government was testing their blood.
Mr. Munda said this tended to create a negative impression in many, just as the rumours over COVID vaccines had done earlier, and that the biggest challenge was to dispel these notions and ensure maximum community involvement in the mission.
Mr. Munda’s remarks came as he was speaking at the launch of a training session for an awareness campaign that’s part of the government’s mission to make India “free” of SCD by 2047. This genetic blood disorder is especially prevalent among tribal populations in India.
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As part of its mission, the government is trying to screen about seven crore tribal people in 17 identified States for SCD and traits of SCD by 2025. Mr. Munda had said earlier this year that this exercise would be expanded to create a digital data bank of detailed health profiles of tribal people living in these areas to help government healthcare systems to accurately treat them.
“This target that we have set and started to achieve might make us feel like we are doing great. But there are also challenges at the same time. In places I have visited, a common question from the target population is, ‘why does the government want to test tribals’ blood’?” Mr. Munda said on Tuesday at the launch of the awareness and training campaign.
He added that this would be a key challenge to overcome in the government’s mission, and that the solution lay in trying to ensure maximum community involvement. Apart from this, Mr. Munda said that “there will also be many people who do not like good things happening” and also people “who like things to be stalled and then pointing it out”.
“But we have to come out of this and build an ecosystem where the community is itself involved. We are thinking about the future of the population,” Mr. Munda added.
The programme for focussed intervention to arrest the spread of SCD is being run in collaboration with the Tribal Affairs Ministry and the Health Ministry, with the former coordinating the programme.
The Tribal Affairs Ministry is leading the awareness drives of the programme while the Health Ministry is anchoring the screening and treatment protocol. A 21-member Expert Committee constituted by the Tribal Affairs Ministry has prepared a detailed Awareness and Counselling module that standardised awareness activities, which will be undertaken at the district, block, and village levels, according to senior government officials. They added that the module had also been translated in local tribal languages to enable a grassroots involvement in the campaign.
The launch of the training session on Tuesday was attended by about 140 master trainers nominated by the States, who will then train officials at the district level, and pass it on to the block and village level, so that the message can be driven home. “By the end of the chain, we intend to reach everyone from the anganwadis and ASHAs (Accredited Social Health Activist) to panchayat members and sarpanches. We also want to reach traditional tribal village chiefs, tribal healers and other community leaders, who can encourage our target population to get screened and seek help,” a senior official said.
The Tribal Affairs Minister also cautioned officials at the launch of the campaign that they must be careful about which milestones they celebrate in the programme. “Our aim is to treat — yes. But the number of people we treat is one thing and the number of people who are cured is another,” he said, adding that the goal was to prevent the disease and not just treat it.
