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Tried to calculate the actual cost of vaccine based on the experience of one of my friends in rural cbe. She had to take an auto five times a week * two times a day for nearly two weeks to go to various government centres to check for availability for her parents. She lost +
salary money because she had to take time away from her data-entry work all these days and wait hours at the centre. She had to pay someone 150rs to check for slot on cowin app. She also said some seniors and disabled people who can afford it are paying auto drivers and other +
helpful workers about 400Rs each to stand in queue on their behalf from 5 in the morning to 8 for vaccine tokens. It's not buying a doughnut. Vaccine scarcity, accessibility problems, lack of communication, a strained workforce, mixed messaging, all cost people money.
Even when scouting centres by car or bike you're paying for the fuel, for time. And not everyone can afford to take a few days off or even a few hours off for a few days. If you're a daily wager, old, poor, disabled, the cost of your vaccine goes higher and higher and higher.
In fact, if you have a car and are comfortably off, your vaccine might well be cheaper. The flower-seller paati I spoke to at the PHC the other day told me it was her tenth day putting attendance there. She couldn't check in early every day or wait hours, so she just turns up +
when she can and gives her name and age and her son's phone number to the staff. She's never gotten a callback but it's the best she can do. She truly wants the vaccine! Think of families of four, of six. The hurdles are so costly to cross. Vaccines should be free AND +
easy to access for the most vulnerable. Government messaging should be inclusive, useful and consistent. There should be staff at each centre to help people who don't have id proof or phone numbers. To help the illiterate. To clear doubts. Centres should have enough spaced +
seating and should be accessible in every way to disabled people and seniors. As long as none of this is realised, the vaccines are not free even if no money changes hands.
The government has to think of the small things in such a vital public health endeavour. People are getting turned away from centres because they don't have photocopies of their id cards. One person turned away who cannot get back with a photocopy in time before the day's stock +
ends is one more person who has to go back the next morning at 5 and stand in line again for a token. The vaccine price is higher for them now. Keep a scanner at the centre for such cases if you must. Or administer the vaccine seeing the original id and give them time to hand +
in the photocopy and then hand over their vaccination certificate. Just... pay attention to the details. The details are more than 150rs vaccine or 1500rs vaccine. It's several rickety systems that you've to help people navigate. A large percent of all the stress and expense +
involved in all this can be reduced just by improving communication. The centres are helpless because even they do not know when they'll get the next vaccine stock and how many vials it will contain. How will they communicate anything usefully or consistently to the people?
It's all so unreliable at every stage that it's morbidly hilarious to find people here blaming the public for not getting vaccinated. More for them to say haha it's free. Your face.
TL;DR, in a grossly unequal system, free things cost more for the poor and the marginalised than expensive things for those with means and the otherwise privileged. We're seeing it play out in this worst of situations and it's an utter disgrace. Worse that without easy access +
to vaccines, the vulnerable and poor become more vulnerable and poorer and should they need to seek out medical care, guess whom the system favours.
