PANAJI
Indian Medical Association - Goa on Tuesday wrote to the Directorate of Health Services voicing the urgent need to ramp up the speed and widen the coverage of Covid-19 vaccination in the state to prevent a second wave of the pandemic.
In the letter, IMA-Goa president Dr Vinayak Buvaji has sought to highlight certain issues while also suggesting a slew of measures to streamline the effective delivery of the vaccine. He stressed that the success of vaccination and the resultant reduction in the incidence of new cases would depend heavily on the speed with which Goa covers at least 60 per cent of the population.
To this end, the IMA has suggested that the registration on the Co-Win portal be made user friendly and open with the involvement of responsible medical associations, the involvement of DDSSY empanelled health centres, the involvement of reputed offices and other prominent places like police headquarters, major police stations and so on. Additionally, allowance of on the spot registration for vaccination and carrying out the vaccination drive daily has also been recommended.
IMA has noted that the present approach of mandatory pre-registration of Health Care Workers (HCWs) has its limitations resulting in denial to upload the beneficiaries’ name on the Co-Win portal. To prevent this hiccup, IMA has requested the government to authorize the local medical association to approve the beneficiary and direct them for the administration of the vaccine to the nearest Covid vaccine booth with authenticated ID proof.
“This approach will lead to using the set up to maximum potential and minimize the wastage of vaccines,” the letter reads.
To speed up the process of data entry, the government has been asked to consider onboarding private medical institutions empanelled under the DDSSY. Besides, the use of all private DDSSY empanelled hospitals along with all PHCs, CHCs, District hospitals, Sub District Hospitals and GMC for conducting the vaccination sessions instead of using schools and booths has also been suggested. IMA believes that owing to the existing infrastructural capabilities of such institutions, this could increase the vaccination numbers almost by 70 to 80 per cent. As a result, the complete population of Goa could be covered within mere six to eight months.
Interestingly, IMA has also opined that in case if in the near future, nominal charges are levied on vaccination, the same could be capped for private HCWs.
