E-Paper
Indian Medical Association writes to PMO on tweaked Covid-19 vaccination guidelines
Health ministry recently stated that the vaccine introduction will span over multiple groups, sequentially, starting with healthcare workers. However, the guidelines issued by the state mentions that private hospitals ‘registered with the district’ will be eligible
The Indian Medical Association (IMA), Maharashtra chapter, has alleged a biased treatment meted out to private hospitals by the state government, which the IMA alleges has tweaked the Covid-19 vaccination guidelines issued by the central government.
The health ministry recently stated that the vaccine introduction will span over multiple groups, sequentially, starting with healthcare workers. However, the guidelines issued by the state mentions that private hospitals ‘registered with the district’ will be eligible. The IMA alleges that the central government does not mention any such clause. The association has said that this will lead to the exclusion of multiple doctors from privately-run hospitals, clinics, pathology clinics, X-ray and sonography clinics. The district health offices across the state are now in the process of collecting this database for vaccination against the infection whenever the vaccine is available for administering.
Alleging this bias, the IMA has now written to the PMO since earlier the association has said that multiple letters to the chief minister’s office had gone unanswered. The letter states, “The central government finalised to set up a database for this purpose and published a booklet of guidelines in this regard. In these guidelines on page no. 6 and 7, what kind of doctors will get the vaccination has been mentioned in very simple language. This includes all government and private hospitals, government doctors, as well as all health workers in private clinics, day OPDs and polyclinics.
The central government has planned to vaccinate all these health workers on a priority basis. The central government, then, directed all the states to collect the information accordingly. Accordingly, the Hon’ble health secretary of the Government of Maharashtra sent an official letter, on October 23, to all district collectors, municipal commissioners and divisional commissioners. However, the Hon’ble health secretary of Maharashtra changed the guidelines given by the central government. In that letter, by changing point no. 8b, the words ‘registered with the district’ were introduced in parenthesis, while enumerating the private medical facilities.
In a subsequent meeting with all the district collectors, Hon’ble health secretary of Maharashtra directed that only the doctors and medical staff of the hospitals registered under the Bombay Nursing Home Act should be registered. This has led to the exclusion of doctors from privately-run hospitals, clinics, pathology clinics, X-ray and sonography clinics.”
Dr Avinash Bhondwe said, “Along with government doctors, private medical professionals have also played a key role in treating patients during the Covid-19 pandemic. Of the 61 private doctors who died of coronavirus in Maharashtra, the number of general practitioners and private clinic owners was higher.
Yet, we feel that they have been left out for the reason known only to the state government. There are 25,000 hospitals in Maharashtra and one lakh allopathic doctors registered with the Maharashtra Medical Council. There are another 1.2 lakh doctors of AYUSH and so, totally around 2.2 lakh, who have been kept outside the vaccination priority.”
Dr Bhagwan Pawar, district health officer, who has been nominated to organise the database from both private and government hospitals, said, “We have about 233 government facilities which are eligible as healthcare workers and 12,166 private facilities. We have distributed the template that we received from the state government to all the private and government hospitals.
We have got the responses from 216 government facilities and over 3,385 private hospitals. Since the form is an exhaustive one, we send back the ones which are incomplete, we have over a week’s time to get all the information and we will be able to get it.”
Dr Pawar also added that the forms have been sent to all the clinics including the sonography and even X-ray clinics and will send all the necessary information to the state government.
