Rangatahi last off the blocks for vaccine, but first to be blamed, Māori leaders say

Friday, 15 October 2021

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As the nation struggles with lockdowns and alert level uncertainty, Māori leaders fear the community’s frustration is shifting unfairly towards unvaccinated rangatahi Māori.

Group 4, everyone aged 12 and over, was given the green light to get vaccinated on September 1, including rangatahi Māori, who are generally 16 to 30-year-olds.

Māori Women’s Welfare League national president Prue Kapua said the low vaccination rate for rangatahi Māori was due to a number of factors, including the Government’s Eurocentric vaccine roll-out, the need for multiple conversations with whānau to address their concerns, a lack of trust in the Government, and pressure from the wider population to get vaccinated.

It has created an uncomfortable environment for rangatahi Māori, she said.

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Prue Kapua, the national president for the Māori Women's Welfare League, said the Government set Māori up to take the blame for lockdowns.

Kapua said the roll-out had not put Māori first from the get-go and now the ramifications were starting to show.

“That’s a situation of the Government’s making, [and] they will blame us at the end.

With Auckland still in lockdown, along with some areas of Waikato and Northland, Māori leaders are concerned the lower rangatahi vaccination rate could see young Māori becoming scapegoats for Government inaction.

“What concerns me now is, we have a situation where all of this now hinges on Māori vaccinations. All of their frustrations around lockdown are due to the Government plans, but people’s reaction is going to be to blame Māori.”

For months, health professionals, iwi leaders, disability advocates and data experts have been calling for the Government to prioritise vaccinations for Māori because health and socioeconomic disparities make them more vulnerable to the impacts of Covid-19.

Despite these priority calls, the Government stuck to its roll-out plan for the general population.

Kapua said the Crown has had plenty of time to take on Māori expert advice, but it chose not to.

“Whatever way you look at it, right from the outset they should have been taking the advice that we need to be prioritising Māori.”

The Ministry of Health’s Māori population statistics help explain how the Government’s vaccine plan created a barrier to early vaccination for Māori and Pacific people.

In August, the ministry acknowledged the need to assess equitable outcomes, stating Māori and Pacific populations have a younger age structure than other groups. Fifteen per cent of Māori and Pacific people are aged over 60 compared with 30 per cent of non-Māori/Pacific, while 77 per cent of Māori and 79 per cent of Pacific are under the age of 54.

The Ministry said the opportunity for significant numbers of Māori and Pacific people to be vaccinated would not occur until vaccinations started for this age group. Māori and Pacific communities also struggle with co-morbidities at a younger age compared to the rest of the population.

A week after the ministry admitted the age disparities, the Delta outbreak struck. New Zealand went into an alert level 4 lockdown with Māori first-dose rates at just 25.17 per cent.

The bulk of the Māori and Pacific populations were not allowed to start their vaccinations until September 1, in Group 4 of the roll-out. Now, there is a panic to vaccinate these vulnerable groups as restrictions are eased in Auckland. The focus is unfairly on rangatahi Māori, with the lowest rates in the country, despite being part of the last group to be vaccinated, said Kapua.

Tauawhi Bonilla wants young Māori to take up the chance to vaccinate against Covid-19.

The latest figures show vaccination rates have risen to just over 61 per cent for Māori, with a general population uptake sitting at 83 per cent.

Tauawhi Bonilla, co-leader of Ngāti Rangatahi, said the growing anger about lockdowns was being unfairly placed on young Māori, who needed support to choose the vaccine, not blame.

Ngāti Rangatahi, an online campaign to help young Māori make informed decisions about the vaccine, has been waiting more than three weeks for the funding promised to them by Associate Health Minister (Māori Health) Peeni Henare and Māori Development Minister Willie Jackson.

It was a wasted opportunity as the Super Saturday Vaxathon goes ahead without their support, Bonilla said.

The Government had pushed health providers to pull out all the stops to get the nation vaccinated, but seeing the event go ahead without the Ngāti Rangatahi campaign was disappointing, he said.

“It feels quite deflating. There’s not much backing from the Ministry of Health to provide funding, but what’s more frustrating is they have approved other budgets twice the size of ours.”

Bonilla said the leaders of the Government’s vaccine roll-out had flipped the aggression on to young Māori, rather than taking responsibility for their slow uptake of Māori strategies.

They don’t want to be under fire any more, Bonilla said.

“They won’t extinguish any aggression because they look through the lens that public pressure is a vaccination strategy.

“They’re so fixated on the end goal of getting everyone vaccinated, but they’re not appreciating the nuances of our people.”

Bonilla said the vaccine roll-out had done little to address the issues of why some rangatahi were reluctant to get vaccinated.

“You need to address the fundamental issues, it’s not Covid, it's not the vaccine, it’s their trust issues with the Government.”

Dr Lily Fraser, clinical director for Turuki Health Care in Māngere, Auckland, said rangatahi were becoming targets for racism.

Health experts were calling for all Māori to be vaccinated from the beginning, she said. The lower vaccination rate could have been mitigated if whānau could have been vaccinated together. Yet now, as rangatahi worked towards making the decision to get vaccinated, they were being met with hostility, Fraser said.

“I've already heard reports of people experiencing racism from non-Māori. That experience doesn’t create any better goodwill about the process.”

Fraser said that anyone who wanted the vaccine was likely to already be vaccinated. But because the largest proportion of Māori and Pacific people were in group 4, their vaccinations were delayed and this allowed misinformation to take hold in her South Auckland community, which she’s now having to contend with.

“We are definitely struggling to have that conversation with some whānau, especially our rangatahi. Some people struggle to articulate what their concern is.

“I forget for some people it’s not a no-brainer, or that they trust that it isn’t a world quest to end humankind.”

Fraser said many rangatahi in her community were facing underlying health conditions and were immunocompromised. She worried that if they weren’t vaccinated soon, the community would see the risks firsthand.

“You can’t change the past, but for now it’s just continuing the mahi.

“We are waiting for people to change their minds, but unfortunately it might just take for it to get personal.”