The Hastings community is on a mission to get rough sleepers vaccinated against Covid-19.
Pastor Warren Heke talked to Hawke's Bay DHB about vaccinating homeless people he worked with. Photo: Tom Kitchin
Hastings Church lead pastor Warren Heke thought it was essential to vaccinate rough sleepers once level four lockdown hit.
"We set up to provide a connection point for the guys we knew would be on the street. And so we provided a breakfast and a coffee and an evening meal, and in the process discovered that all of our contacts were not vaccinated."
Warren talked to the Hawke's Bay DHB and a vaccination crew arrived on Monday.
But he said some people had to be convinced of the merits of getting vaccinated.
"You're dealing with a whole raft of often quite wild fears, and also because there isn't much of an understanding or a lot of health literacy, you end up with theories that are bits and pieces of other ideas."
He said how they were talked to was important.
"If we just said 'here's the vaccines and you need to get it', we would have people who might respond, we would have others who would immediately resist because of the approach.
"My approach is to be pretty self-effacing and just go 'this is what's happened for me, this is why I'm doing something and ... you know me well enough to know whether what I'm saying is made-up or whether it's something I've actually experienced or something I know about."
He said it was about protecting not only the homeless, but the most vulnerable.
"In that community we work with ... the council started calling them whānau pounamu and they're our most vulnerable, they're treasured family."
One man, who RNZ agreed not to name, used to live on the streets but now lives at the Top 10 Holiday Park in Hastings - often used as emergency accommodation.
He joins the rough sleeping crew most mornings at Hastings Church, affiliated with the Assemblies of God, for a cup of coffee, some Weet-Bix and fruit.
At first, he was unsure about getting a vaccination.
"I was one of those ones that would go, nup. Let the natural immune system do it all."
But he said through kōrero, he became convinced.
"I want to make sure that I am healthy and I can still live above ground, instead of being one of the statistics."
And he would certainly be returning for his second dose in a few weeks.
"Well if it's going to save my life, why not?"
The DHB's senior cultural adviser JB Heperi-Smith helped lead the clinic.
He said it had to be run a bit differently from a standard vaccination centre.
"You'll see the homeless turn up, having kai and respecting that and it's their tikanga, we're in their world and we're respecting that and that's heartfelt, that's real."
This was followed by a quick hui and meet and greet, the whanaungatanga.
"It's led by a karakia and then once we've done the cultural lead and anything, and then we move into the clinical part."
He said it was an honour to work with the whānau pounmau.
The latest statistics from today show nearly 97,000 have had one dose of the Pfizer vaccine in Hawke's Bay, 66 percent of the population. Just over 50,000 - 34 percent - have had two.
