The above inverted commas, pronounced by Germán Escobar Morales, Vice Minister of Public Health and Provision of Services of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, opens the doors of the Expanded Immunization Plan (EPI) to biologicals against Wuhan pneumonia.
The news will take the doses against the pandemic to nearly four thousand centers that have already been enabled for several years in Colombia and will close just over 1,700 places in the national territoryto which citizens of all ages are summoned.
from the local
This transfer is something that the country’s Health Secretariats are already working on, as well as the authorities that guide them. On what is supplied in the process, the epidemiologist Carlos Humberto Orozco, head of said office in Manizales, spoke.
“The Ministry of Health gave the order to carry out an evaluation to know precisely how many doses have been applied, how many are stored and how many have been lost. When that balance is done, it will give the zero hour and the guidelines to transfer the responsibility of the application to the PAI”, he pointed out.
According to OrozcoManizales today has 12 extramural vaccination points and 17 IPS accredited for it. Figures that will change due to the order of said national portfolio.
“At the time it is determined, there is still no date for that, all the extramurality will be lifted so that it is the IPS who comply with it. We have already made significant progress, because the entire inventory of the IPS is being reviewed, we are looking at notifications and charges as required, among other things”, assured the secretary; as he pointed out that it was all going to end in a stat adjustment.
Those inventories, warned the professional, could take a month or more. The National Health Superintendence (SNS) and the Attorney General’s Office will also have to be informed of this.
“Then will come the adaptation of human talent, equipment and infrastructure to allow biologicals to be managed in the best way. In this, each entity will have to be very judicious, according to the network it belongs to and the people it must cover. They will have to adapt to the use of ultra-freezers and the special storage of biological products,” Orozco emphasized.
Will anticovid vaccines remain free?
Orozco commented that the application of the covid-19 scheme will remain free. He ruled that there is still no certainty that these applications will permanently constitute the PAI.
“They are going to apply them within the PAI, what is not known is if they are going to be part of it. There is a lack of evidence and research on what the best biologics will be, what the vaccination cycles will be, among other variables. Surely, with other certainties, this will take place as a parallel cycle of vaccination”.
The secretary concluded: “We need all the people who have not started their regimen to start it and for those who are missing doses to complete it. We are seeing a very noticeable decrease in the number of people who come to be vaccinated and we need everyone to be protected.”
–
