As India’s Covid-19 vaccination programme gets fast-paced, a professional body of doctors has called upon the Centre and state government to address the issue of gender disparity.
The Organised Medicine Academic Guild (OMAG), an umbrella organisation of professional medical associations of post-graduate doctors, said India will be able to meet the commitment of vaccinating the eligible population by the end of 2021, however, we need to address some of the challenges on war-footing.
“The challenges in terms of gender disparity need to be addressed through women-friendly clinics and vaccination timings,” OMAG secretary general Dr Ishwar Gilada and president Dr Suneela Garg said in a statement.
“The elderly population and difficult to reach population needs to be provided vaccines at the doorsteps. At no stage we can afford to be complacent with regard to vaccinations, addressing vaccine hesitancy whether it is total or relative, continued Covid-appropriate behaviour, and looking for new variants of concerns through genomic studies,” said Dr Gilada.
According to OMAG, one of the major concerns is regarding the use of Covishield. "We are majorly banking on Covishield that meets 90 per cent supplies and Covaxin that meets the reminder with Sputnik V vaccination is minuscule 30 lakhs (0.4 per cemt). Moderna mRNA vaccine licensed to Cipla for marketing, Johnson & Johnson-single dose licensed to Biological-E for domestic production and ZyCov of Zydus Cadila – none have made debut. Probably from next month these three and six more vaccines awaiting the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) nod, will give a major boost to the requisite quantity," it said.
“More so it will further help enhance India’s image globally with its capacity to export vaccines to those countries in dire need of vaccines, as they are still below 5 per cent of vaccination,” it said.
Even if 100 per cent of the adult population is fully vaccinated, we will need to at least vaccinate 25 per cent of the below 18 population, to be able to achieve the required target of 70 per cent of the total population to attain the ‘herd immunity’, if at all the concept of herd immunity holds true for the coronavirus.
"As regards to the third wave looming at large, the populous states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu hold key due to the relatively low pace of vaccination,” Dr Gilada said.
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