SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) – Samia Dridi, who was born in Saint-Denis and works here as a nurse, fears what could happen in this poor neighborhood in the Parisian suburbs, north of the capital and where the remains of several kings of France in a majestic basilica.
Dridi and her sister accompanied their 92-year-old mother, born in Algeria, to a vaccination center that opened last week offering vaccines to people over 75 years of age.
Red tape and supply problems complicate the vaccination campaign across France, but those problems are particularly acute in the Saint-Denis region.
It is the poorest area in France and last spring (the second quarter of the year) it registered the highest mortality rate in the country, mainly due to COVID-19. Approximately 75% of its residents are immigrants or of foreign origin and some 130 languages are spoken in the area. Health services are poor and hospitals have half or a third of the beds for the chronically ill than those in other regions. Many are essential workers in supermarkets, garbage collection services, and the healthcare field.
At first it was thought that the coronavirus was an agent that did not make distinctions and affected rich and poor alike. But new studies indicate that some are more vulnerable than others, especially the elderly, people with poor health and the poor, who live on the margins of society, including immigrants who do not speak French.
Dridi, 56, who has more than three decades of experience as a nurse, is relieved that for now “there is no significant evolution” of the virus in her neighborhood. But you don’t forget what happened when the virus first appeared.
“There were entire families infected with COVID,” he said. Often several generations of a family live in a small apartment, which facilitates the contagion, according to the experts.
Despite that experience, local authorities say it is difficult to get information about vaccines to people, in part because many do not speak French, have no access to medical services, like the bulk of the French, or distrust them. vaccinations
Starting in March, a bus will circulate, especially for street fairs, which will offer information about vaccines. They are also training some 40 “vaccine ambassadors” who speak multiple languages to provide information and disprove false rumors.
The aim is to clarify things for people like Youssef Zaoui, a 32-year-old Algerian who lives in Saint-Denis.
“I heard that vaccines are dangerous, more than the virus,” said Zaoui, sitting in the shade of the basilica. Proof not to worry about the virus ?: The butcher on that street and a guy who sells cigarettes. They were there at the beginning of March, when the outbreak arrived, “and they are still there,” he said. “I am also here”.
Is there any chance that the vaccine will reduce the inequalities reflected in mortality statistics?
“For the vaccine to even things out, everyone must be vaccinated,” said Patrick Simon, one of the authors of a June study on the vulnerability of minorities in the Seine-Saint-Denis area to COVID-19. He added that there are still difficulties for the marginalized in the community to receive the vaccine, “so these inequalities are also reflected in the vaccine.”
The French healthcare system provides care for everyone, but bureaucratic hurdles and co-payments often drive away immigrants and the poor. Government information, on the other hand, does not always reach marginalized sectors.
A nurse at a municipal health center, Dridi is a witness to the problems associated with poverty.
“I give an injection, I put a bandage on them … and someone tells me ‘I live in a car. I’m on the street, ‘”Dridi said.
That poverty was not visible in the site where Dridi’s mother managed to get vaccinated, one of 17 centers that opened in the region last week and in which the luckiest of Saint-Denis showed up, who live in private homes. Some came with sticks or aided by others.
In a short time, the available doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were reduced, not only in the area but throughout Europe.
“I was lucky to get vaccinated,” said a woman through tears. She was infected with COVID-19 in April when she was being treated for a medical problem at a private clinic. His mother died after catching it in a hospital where he went after suffering a fall.
The woman, who did not want to give her name, told Dridi to take care of her mother “because she was his treasure.”
Dridi says that watching people die from COVID-19 changes a person’s perspective.
“People say no (to vaccines) because they are not in contact with death,” he said. Death “makes you react.”
