Private Hospitals Account for Negligible Share of Vaccination in Rural Areas

Private vaccination centres in rural areas account for less than 5% of the doses administered even though the Centre’s current vaccination policy allows 25% of the total doses produced domestically to be procured by the private sector, according to a report in the Times of India.

Analysing data from over 9,000 vaccination centres in the eight largest cities and the eight most rural districts in the same states, the report showed that in six of these rural districts, private vaccination centres accounted for only 0-3% of the vaccine administered. In the other two districts, both located in Maharashtra, private vaccination accounted for a little over 5%.

The analysis shows that, rural India, where more than 60% of the country’s population lives, is almost solely dependent on government vaccination centres.

The central government’s new vaccine strategy, unfurled in April, allocated 50% of the vaccine doses produced in the country to be procured by the state governments and private players in equal parts. They would have to get the doses directly from the manufacturers at rates different than that availed by the Centre. This strategy also opened up vaccination from the 18-45 years age group.

The data analysed by the TOI report showed that of the nearly 1.9 crore doses administered in the eight cities till May 16, 1.4 crore or 75% were done in government centres. Whereas, in the most rural districts in these eight states, out of 15.1 lakh doses administered, 14.8 lakh or 97% was done in government centre. The eight states are Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Haryana, Telangana, West Bengal, and Maharashtra.

As the current vaccine strategy stipulates private players to deal directly with vaccine manufacturers, smaller and standalone private facilities may find it hard to vaccine doses while bigger hospital chains in big cities will get the major bulk of the vaccines, the report said. In an earlier media report, it was shown that vaccination in the private sector is being dominated by four big corporate hospitals.

The highest shares of private players in administered doses, nearly 40%, were found in some districts of Delhi and in the Bengaluru municipal corporation area. However, in absence of a rural district in Delhi, nearby Nuh in Haryana was taken for comparison in the analysis. In Kolkata and Chennai, private centres accounted for a third of the doses administered and in Mumbai, over 25%. In Pune and Ahmedabad, the two smaller cities among the eight, the private vaccination share is 19% and 9%, respectively, according to the TOI report.

This situation may put the governments in a fix as skewing its vaccine supply to the rural population would leave the urban population of 18-44 years age group to largely get inoculated by paying private players. On the other hand, if the state governments do not skew the supply to rural areas, those people will miss out on vaccination, the report observed.