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 India has partly or fully vaccinated about 101 million men, nearly
17% more than women. Men account for 54% of the total number of
people inoculated, according to the data.
Many federally administered regions, the capital Delhi, and big
states such as Uttar Pradesh have seen some of the worst inequities.
Only Kerala in the south and Chhattisgarh in central India have
vaccinated more women than men.
Graphic: Gender disparity in India's COVID-19 vaccinations Gender
disparity in India's COVID-19 vaccinations https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/INDIA-VACCINES/yzdpxmaoovx/chart.png
"We are noticing that men, especially in towns and villages, prefer
to take the vaccine before women as they have to travel for work,
while women are relegated to domestic chores," said Prashant Pandya,
medical superintendent at a big government hospital in the western
state of Gujarat.
Health officials say rumours about vaccines disrupting women's
menstruation cycle and reducing fertility have also contributed to
the skewed data. The government has rejected the concerns.
"The government will have to ramp up awareness programmes in rural
India to ensure women understand the importance of vaccines and
prioritise themselves in this race to secure the two shots," said
Sudha Narayanan, a former bureaucrat who worked in the health
ministry in New Delhi.
Women will have to step forward to get vaccinated or the divide will
rapidly widen, Narayanan added.
India, with a population of 1.3 billion, has about 6% more men than
women.
A spokesperson for the federal Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
did not respond to Reuters' questions about the gender disparity.
Some women in the rural parts of Gujarat and neighbouring Rajasthan
state have urged the authorities to deliver vaccines at their
doorstep, saying they are unable to travel to hospitals leaving
their children behind.
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"I don't know how to read and write...how will I register for the
vaccine," said Laxmiben Suthar, a mother of four in the town of
Vadnagar in Gujarat. "The government must send the medicine to us."
India's vaccination policy has evolved fast but the federal
government has so far resisted calls for door-to-door immunisations
given that the vaccines have only been authorised for emergency use
and recipients need to be monitored for a short period for any
adverse reactions.
Urban Indians are also getting COVID-19 shots much faster than the
hundreds of millions of people living in the countryside, government
data has shown. That is partly due to a policy that helped richer
cities buy more vaccine doses than rural districts.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday reversed the policy and said
vaccines will be offered at no charge to all adults starting June
21. The government will also facilitate more walk-in inoculations
after complaints about the online registration process.
India has so far administered 233.7 million doses, the most in the
world after China and the United States, but given the necessary two
doses to only about 5% of its estimated 950 million adults.
India has the world's second-largest number of coronavirus
infections after the United States, with total cases at nearly 29
million, according to health ministry data. The country has suffered
351,309 deaths.
(Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
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