Doctors body urges govt to make vaccination more across India as December deadline nears

Hailing India’s vaccination programme on the day it surpassed the 100-crore mark, the Organized Medicine Academic Guild (OMAG) has urged the government to make the drive more even across the country.

While states like Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim are the best-performing ones, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand are still lagging behind with a lower rate of either single-dose or fully vaccinated people in their population than the average national single-dose rate of 51 per cent and fully vaccination rate of 20 per cent of population, OMAG stated.

OMAG, a federation of 15 professional associations of post-graduate doctors in India, said time is of prime essence because all eligible people should be fully vaccinated worldwide within a limited time.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is aiming for all countries to fully vaccinate 70 per cent of their population by June 2022, India plans to do that in the next 70 days and the speed chosen is 2 crore vaccines per day.

“Vaccines should round the clock, maybe in two shifts of total 16 hours, 8 am till midnight. It should be available all days of the week irrespective of holidays. On public holidays, they should work overtime with a higher workforce. Mobile vaccination vans should come handy,” OMAG Secretary General Ishwar Gilada and president Suneela Garg said in a press statement.

Garg called on NGOs to help people who do not have access to digital services and also asked to simplify the walk-in process.

According to OMAG, the Centre has 70 days to fully vaccinate the adult population and the administration needs to gear up to achieve that goal.

There are six vaccines currently approved in India from mid-2021 onwards but only three vaccines are being currently administered, led by Covishield which has been administered to 89 per cent of the beneficiaries. “We need to ensure production of all vaccines approved in India matches scale as well and all those approved are being rolled out in the Covid vaccination programme,” Gilada said.

“Doing so will also help India have a much bigger stock of Covid vaccines for its “Vaccine Maitri” programme to help other nations. That will also generate foreign capital via exports for our domestic manufacturers,” he said.