Lagos engages 135 private health facilities for COVID-19 vaccination

Lagos State Government has said that no fewer than 135 private health facilities have been enrolled into its mass vaccination strategy targeted at vaccinating four million residents by December 2021.

This, according to the government, brings the number of public and private vaccination sites in the state to 360.

The state’s Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, who disclosed this at a news briefing at the weekend, said that the 360 vaccination sites, comprising the 135 private health facilities and 225 existing public vaccination sites, had been earmarked for the mass vaccination campaign.

While noting that more private facilities would be added to the list, Abayomi said the private facilities were engaged after a rigorous selection and accreditation process that hinges on quality assurance, vaccine safety and follow-up care.

According to him, the state government decided to partner with the private sector to rapidly ramp up COVID-19 vaccination to achieve herd immunity.

He noted that the state government decided to leverage on both the strengths of the public and private sectors of the healthcare system with a full understanding that a substantial proportion of the population will need to be vaccinated to mitigate the impact of a fourth wave in Lagos and reduce the impact of the spread of the COVID-19 virus and prevent the re-emergence of the catastrophes witnessed during the previous waves of the pandemic.

Abayomi claimed that the Lagos State Government, through the Primary Health Care Board, does not have the capacity alone to ramp up vaccination to a massive level in such a short time and before the deadline without partnering with the private sector.

He said that the inclusion of the private health facilities into the public private partnership was similar to the strategy deployed by the state for the escalating COVID-19 testing in Lagos, which resulted in a dramatic increase 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 the state accounting for more than 30 per cent alone of all COVID-19 PCR tests done in Nigeria.

Abayomi noted that registration for vaccination at public and private health facilities should be done online on the website of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) – https://nphcda.vaccination.gov.ng.