A deadly second wave of Covid is rampaging Africa’s two largest economies, causing mounting deaths and inflicting misery upon families, especially the poor.
While Africa’s most populous nation is obsessed with how the political leaders will first get the Covid shot on live tv, in South Africa, the focus is on how to get the vaccines and they will be paid for.
While Nigeria boasts the continent’s biggest economy, South Africa calls its the most advanced economy on the continent and the difference in the quality of governance is showing even in the darkness of the pandemic.
In South Africa health minister Zweli Mkhize says the Treasury has “come to the party”, confirmed that it will pay for the majority of the population to receive Covid-19 vaccinations, but the Nigerian government is yet to say how it will fund the vaccines and from whom the vaccines will be procured for so much of Nigerians and for how much.
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Unlike in Nigeria, South Africa has secured a Covid-19 vaccine for health workers, with one-million doses of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine due to arrive in January and a further 500,000 in February.
According to Mkhize South African government has done a deal under which private health insurance firms will support the vaccine acquisition programme.
Some big medical schemes have offered to cover the cost of their own members and subsidise a number of public sector patients in South Africa.
The government in S. Africa has set a target to vaccinate 40-million people by the end of 2021.
This would mean vaccinating 316,000 people a day. The government plans to ensure 6,300 full-time vaccinators will be available.
For instance, Discovery Health anticipates that it will cost an upper limit of $454m for medical schemes to fund Covid-19 vaccines for 7.1-million of their own members as well as to subsidise an equal number of non-members in the public sector.
The funding model under consideration would entail medical scheme members paying double the price for the vaccine with the scheme donating 50% of the cost to a government funding vehicle, such as the Solidarity Fund.
Medical scheme members in S. Africa would receive the vaccine as a prescribed minimum benefit. There are 7.1-million members of schemes above the age of 15. While there are many factors that will affect the cost of vaccines — including the brand, the number of doses
A cost of $454m would be less than 2% of gross annual medical scheme contributions.
