‘WE ARE EXPERIENCED VACCINATORS, BUT NO ONE HAS REPLIED TO OUR OFFER TO HELP’
THE start of the Covid-19 vaccination programme is the light at the end of a very dark tunnel for Ireland, but it should be running at a much quicker pace.
When we compare Ireland’s progress with that of our nearest neighbour, we can only despair. We have known about the vaccines for almost six months and yet we seem only now to be putting the infrastructure in place to get our population covered.
At the Tropical Medical Bureau, vaccination is our core business. In the last five years, we have vaccinated roughly a million patients throughout Ireland and Britain. Across Ireland, we have a network of 20 clinics that are fully equipped to administer vaccinations.
We also operate a mobile unit, used to set up outside multinational companies and provide flu jabs to employees. They could easily be set up outside schools or nursing homes to provide Covid vaccinations.
In short, we are well experienced in the administering of vaccinations. We are having difficulty in understanding why there has been no response from the Department of Health, the Health Minister, or the HSE to our offer of help with the vaccination roll-out strategy.
We watched with concern as the Government’s HighLevel Task Force on Covid-19 Vaccination met for the first time in November, and saw that its membership was made up of “senior representatives from the Department of Health, the Health Service Executive, the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, the Office of Government Procurement, IDA Ireland, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and the Department of the Taoiseach, together with expertise in the area of logistics”. This group, chaired by a physicist, seemed to include quite a few who might have little experience of vaccination programmes.
Of course, this could be overlooked if the resulting vaccination programme was making great strides, but that does not appear to be the case.
We have established vaccine practitioners throughout
Ireland and the vast majority of them are willing and able to take part in the administering of these vaccines. Along with practice nurses, they are fully trained and experienced. These practitioners administer many
vaccines every year. Despite this, the HSE is looking to employ physiotherapists, and paramedics who have significantly less experience of such work. RTÉ has even reported that dentists are to be recruited to administer vaccinations.
When did a physiotherapist last hold a loaded syringe? When did a dentist last give an injection into the deltoid? These groups have a greater need for training and oversight than what would be required if the HSE utilised existing resources.
Also, the information that potential ‘vaccinators’ will have to read and agree to runs to 130 pages — assuming they have the necessary professional registrations for the work.
So it remains unclear, at this late stage, how many vaccinators we will have; when they will be available; what professional groups they will come from; and what kind of facilities they will be operating in. If the vaccination strategy focused on existing resources where existing protocols, practices, insurance and expertise could be used, the roll-out would be much quicker and smoother.
In his recent televised address to the nation, the Taoiseach said that by the end of March, 1.25 million vaccines will have been administered, with a million doses given in each of the three following months. These are ambitious hopes, but one has to remember that so far we have only rolled out around 300,000 doses. I hear from my medical colleagues that they have some limited understanding about the vaccine roll-out for those in the over-70s cohort, but precious little information on the wider roll-out.
It gives me no pleasure to cast doubt over Ireland’s ability to vaccinate its population swiftly. However, those in charge of this life-saving programme need to reconsider the path they are following and stop trying to reinvent a wheel which is wrapped in a colossal amount of red tape.