The Kerala Government Medical Officers’ Association has informed the government that going forward with COVID vaccination without ensuring sufficient manpower, infrastructure and smooth logistics can create a lot of difficulties for the general public and affect COVID and non-COVID patient care activities seriously.
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The KGMOA pointed out that after relentlessly fighting COVID for over an year, now the entire Health Services personnel were engaged in yet another mammoth exercise of delivering COVID-19 vaccination to the general public. Field-level issues when engaging in such a massive exercise are several and the organisation has submitted a series of suggestions to the government.
The main suggestion of the KGMOA is that the walk-in registration process for receiving COVID-19 vaccination be kept outside the premises of health care institutions and that Akshaya centres or institutions under the Revenue or Local Self-Government Departments be utilised for this purpose. They also point out that vaccination should be restricted to major institutions as far as possible.
They have also suggested that if peripheral institutions are selected as vaccination sites, only those with more than three doctors be selected so that the routine patient care, public health and COVID response activities are not affected.
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It said that the maximum number of beneficiaries vaccinated per day in an institution should be limited, based on the nature, infrastructure, facilities and manpower of the institution.
The KGMOA also said that the maximum participation of private sector health institutions should be ensured and a call centre system with tele consultation facility, linked to e-Sanjeevani, be set up to appropriately.