Even if it’s going to affect many babies, I don’t blame private hospitals for throwing away child immunization from their midst. On the other hand, I put the blame to the Ministry of health.
In its plan to increase the coverage and accessibility of immunization services across the country thus extending the vaccines to privately owned health facilities to provide them to the public free of charge, it didn’t foresee that privately owned health facilities are and will always be money oriented.
As government, it should have known that privately owned facilities are not charity organizations that donate free things but business ventures whose sole aim is to make profits.
I wonder what made the ministry of health to believe that such facilities can offer free services. If some of these health facilities can desist from working on an emergence until all the necessary hospital bills are paid, why expect them to offer free immunization services at their own expenses.
Like some of them pointed out, they pay the electricity bills that run the refrigerators that are supposed to preserve the vaccines and also pay for the staff that is involved in the immunization. With such expenses, how do you expect these facilities to benefit if they offer free immunization services.
And with the increasing taxes that are imposed on them by the government, how can you expect them to have mercy and carry the burden of free services that will only lead them to incur losses.
There is no way that these people can profit from the vaccines offered free by the government if the so called government cannot come out to contribute to the money they spend on the immunization services.
If the government can’t contribute then I suggest they let privately owned facilities to continue to charge for those immunization services. Besides that, have you heard people who attend private hospitals complain about this. This means that they can afford those services. Otherwise why else would they go to private hospitals when there are free government hospitals?
