NEW DELHI: The Centre is planning to allow single doctor clinics across India to offer Covid vaccines in yet another tweak in its vaccination policy for coronavirus, The New Indian Express has learnt.
As per the Centre’s existing Covid vaccination strategy, 25% of the total vaccines available in the country are to be procured by private hospitals and offered to recipients at a price -- Rs 150 administrative cost plus the actual price of the vaccine per dose -- while in government hospitals, jabs are to be administered free of cost.
However, in terms of actual vaccinations carried out so far, the role of private hospitals has remained quite limited and only private hospitals in some cities have been able to participate in a big way.
In the most populous states such as UP and Bihar, where there are a few corporate hospitals, inoculations have largely been conducted in government facilities, data by the Centre show.
As of Saturday, there were only 2,417 private hospitals carrying out Covid vaccinations accounting for less than 5% of 54,977 vaccination centres across India.
“The proposal of permitting single doctor clinics to carry out Covid vaccinations has been given in-principal approval after many states suggested this and bodies of private hospitals also recommended that this move will raise their participation,” said a senior official in the Union Health Ministry.
“This will allow people to access vaccines at their trusted doctors next door and help remove the vaccine hesitancy which is emerging as an issue in many towns,” the official added. "However, there is a concern related to the monitoring of adverse events following immunisation and detailed guidelines for it are being worked out."
Another source in the ministry said that in some states, state aggregators have already started asking doctors practising independently to raise the demands which will then be conveyed to vaccine makers via the Centre.
Representatives of private hospitals, meanwhile, welcomed the proposal. “It is a much-needed step as vaccination has now reached almost a saturation level in big cities while a large population in smaller towns are yet to get the shots,” said Girdhar J Gyani, director general of the Association of Healthcare Providers of India, a body of private hospitals.
Gyani added that if the vaccination service is offered by the regular doctors people see in their neighbourhood, it will help overcome the vaccine hesitancy to a great extent.
The government has been emphasising that it wants more private hospitals, especially those in far-flung and remote areas and smaller ones, to come forward to take part in the vaccination drive.
It has said that this scale-up is required to remove the regional inequity in access to vaccination.