The COVID-19 vaccination drive can still be fixed with common sense and time-tested lessons from Nepal’s home-grown immunisation experience.
One, scale-up vaccination sites. If Nepal has tens of thousands of vaccination sites when routinely immunising children, there is no reason not to have an even higher number for COVID-19 vaccination. Furthermore, the COVID-19 virus does not stop transmiting from 9:00am to 5:00pm and does not take Saturdays off.
Therefore, neither should the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Nepal.
Two, widen reach by engaging the 70 per cent of the health care system of Nepal, which is private. If this can be done for testing and hospital beds, then there is no reason not to find a solution to this. Moreover, the hesitance of the technocrats in engaging the private health providers is puzzling as many of these technocrats have well nurtured private sector investments, interests, and practice.
