Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Prof Akin Abayomi, has
given reasons the state fixed N6,000 fee for individuals who would prefer to
receive the COVID vaccine at private facilities.
The clarification comes after the Governor of Lagos State,
Babajide Sanwo-Olu, announced the fee while flagging off the state’s mass
vaccination exercise on October 27.
In a statement issued on Sunday, Abayomi said the state is collaborating
with the private sector to ensure that those who prefered to receive the
vaccine at private facilities rather than public ones are covered in the
vaccination exercise.
The commissioner also noted that the fee for private sites
would cover logistics, personnel, and other related costs and added that
vaccination was free at public facilities.
The statement read, “The State Government, through the
Primary Health Care Board, does not have the capacity alone to ramp up
vaccination to this massive level in such a short time and before the deadline,
hence the need to include the private sector,”
“The public-private partnership is similar to the strategy
we deployed for escalating our COVID-19 testing which resulted in a dramatic
increase in testing done in Lagos from an average of 200 a day to over 2,000 a
day culminating in a total of 800,000 tests in less than a year and Lagos State
accounting for more than 30% alone of all COVID-19 PCR tests done in Nigeria.
This demonstrates the power of public-private partnerships, with the inclusion
of the significant capacity of the private sector but [the] government
retaining strict regulatory oversight and quality function.
“With this approach,
we intend to ramp up our vaccination strategy using the existing public
facilities as well as [the] inclusion of some private facilities. It is
imperative to emphasise that the vaccines administered in public facilities is
free and would remain free to the public as they were contributed to us by the
Federal Government and our donor partners, those wishing to receive the
vaccines can go to any of the designated 206 government facilities and receive
their dose totally free of charge.
“However, those that wish to receive the vaccines within the
comforts of a private facility can do so at a minimal administrative cost of
N6,000 for two doses, which covers the cost that the private sector, will incur
to facilitate the administration of the vaccine which includes logistics,
personnel, quality oversight, administrative and overhead costs.
“The cost will be proportionally lower for single dose or
those wishing to take a single booster dose,” the statement added.
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