Socialist Democratic Party Of India Moves Supreme Court Seeking Formulation Of Uniform Pan India Policy Of CoVID Vaccine Free Of Cost
A plea has been filed in Supreme Court to formulate a uniform pan India policy of COVID-19 vaccination for providing free of cost to every person within India and on the basis of the slogan/Mantra of the COVAX initiative co-led by the World Health Organisation to ensure equitable access to vaccines across the world is, “No one is safe, unless everyone is safe” .
“The people around the country pin their hopes on a vaccine to put an end to this pandemic. Covishield, which is being manufactured by the Pune-based Serum Institute of India is priced at Rs. 150 per dose for Centre, Rs. 400 per dose for state governments, and Rs. 600 a dose for private hospitals. Both the anti-COVID vaccines are administered in two doses. In this pandemic time, this could seem to be an excessive profit as the majority of India's people cannot bear these vaccine costs.”, the plea states
It has been argued that Right to life includes right to health under Article 21 of the Constitution has been in catena of decisions by the Hon’ble Court & at this juncture, every person in India has the invaluable right to get vaccination at free of cost.
The plea preferred by Socialist Democratic Party Of India states that several state governments claimed for creating new facilities but the same would be hard to keep up with the pace of rising number of infections.
“Crematoriums and graveyards have been running day and night in several cities and people have to wait for hours to get the deceased cremated or buried but experts say that the actual number of deaths could be much higher.”, the plea further states.
The petitioner has averred that the Central Government by providing free vaccination would be able to vaccinate a large population including poorer sections which would help in improving the herd immunity amongst the citizens.
“The situations in India are graver in view of the density of the population. The maintenance of social distancing is also hardly possible in view of the demography ghetto inhabitations and traditional habits so the prevention is better than the cure and every person in India need uniform and compulsory vaccination otherwise in view of contagious nature of the pandemic if a little population is left without vaccination on account of constraints of funds even the vaccine to majority of persons may undo and the country shall remain always vulnerable to the pandemic due to the people who have not been vaccinated.”- excerpt from the plea
In light of the above, apart from formulation of uniform PAN India policy, the plea also seeks for constituting an independent body consisting of Epidemiologist, Virologist, doctors to discuss about systemic impact, including doctors who have specialization in public health, representative of pharmaceutical companies, Nurses, Public Health Workers, Social Workers, Auxiliary Nursing Midwives, Social activist and Volunteers to ease the and implementation to ensure free and equitable vaccination across the States.