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.