Private hospitals unable to lift quota, Odisha loses out on vaccination share

BHUBANESWAR: Odisha on Friday pointed out that the state has been at an unfair disadvantage because private hospitals were unable to lift the vaccines meant for them. The state asked the Centre to re-allot the unused share of the private hospitals to the government.
The state has estimated that it stands to lose 17.19 lakh doses of vaccines in June-July because the private hospitals lifted only 2.23 lakh out of their share of 19.42 lakh doses.
Additional chief secretary (health) Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra wrote a letter to Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan saying that Odisha was losing huge quantities of vaccines meant for private hospitals.
“Though the state is capable of administering 3.5 lakh doses a day, 30.50 lakh have been allotted under the free supply for July, which will be consumed within eight to 10 days. At the same time, stocks meant for private hospitals are not getting used,” Mohapatra said.
The private hospitals lifted 66,500 doses out of 9.25 lakh in June and 1.56 lakh doses out of 10.16 lakh allocated to them in July.
On June 14, the ACS (health) had requested the Union health ministry to reduce the vaccine quota of the private hospitals in the state to five per cent from the current 25, under the revised vaccination guidelines effective from June 21, and divert the 20% to government. Following it up, state’s health minister Naba Kishore Das had on June 26 written a letter to Union health minister Harsh Vardhan.
According to the revised guidelines for the implementation of the Covid vaccination programme issued by the Union health ministry on June 8, it is duty of the the states to aggregate the demands of private hospitals, keeping in mind the equitable distribution of the vaccines among hospitals and across regions for the allocation of the 25% share to the private hospitals. Odisha has very few private hospitals, concentrated mainly in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar, while many districts don’t have any private facility at all.
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