Gates Foundation partners India’s first ‘Vaccination Clinic’ in Pune

Hyderabad: Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad’s Center for Healthcare Entrepreneurship (CfHE) Fellow, Mr Jignesh Patel has launched in Pune a Vaccination on Wheels Clinic, a first-of-its-kind service in India. This is being done in collaboration with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which provided a grant to Mr Jignesh Patel under its Grand Challenges Explorations.

Called ‘VaccineOnWheels.com’ as they have adopted VOW (Vaccination On Wheels) concept, this clinic will go to schools, colleges and corporates to conduct vaccination camps at their doorsteps. It will offer only vaccination services. It was launched on 15th December 2019 in Pune city’s PCMC area. This unique, unconventional, creative, low-cost and high on convenience model has been designed with the idea of ‘reaching the bottom of the pyramid.’

Mr. Jignesh Patel founded Jivika Healthcare to provide this vaccination service. There are many additional features which makes it a unique vaccination service including providing low-cost vaccination service to the low-income group of the population; creating awareness for government’s immunization programme and sells only those vaccines which are not provided through government; and cold chain maintenance as per WHO guidelines with state-of-the-art equipment

Congratulating CfHE Graduate Mr. Jignesh Patel on launching this service, Prof. Renu John, Co-Head, CfHE, and Head, Department of Biomedical Engineering, IIT Hyderabad, said, “This is a unique programme that works hand-in-hand with the government to cover the last mile in delivering vaccines to people of all strata of the society.”

Awareness camps are conducted in community areas through this Vaccine Clinic with the help of animated videos designed in Marathi and Hindi languages. With these videos and group discussions, the clinic motivates mothers to avail free vaccines from the government.

Jivika Healthcare Social Workers will explain how vaccines can save lives of children and help save money by avoiding hospitalization. Every week between Monday and Saturday, the social workers create awareness and utilize Sunday to invite interested families to visit the clinic for the vaccination drive.

Speaking about the goals of VaccineOnWheels.com, Mr Jignesh Patel said, “We have taken this mission to support government and society in getting children fully immunized as per World Health Organization (WHO) and Indian Academy of Pediatrics (IAP) standards for children who are taking vaccination from government centres. With this mission in mind, our social workers and nurses conduct awareness camps in various community areas where the government conducts immunization camps. Through the awareness drive, we educate mothers to get their children vaccinated.”

The One-Year Residential Healthcare Entrepreneurship Programme at CfHE, IIT Hyderabad, helped Mr. Jignesh Patel to understand the gaps in vaccine delivery model from close quarters and identify various issues faced by diverse stakeholders primarily from infants/caregivers/parents in getting vaccinated.

The initiative of Jivika Healthcare’s VaccineOnWheels.com is appreciated and supported by well-known Pediatric doctors of Pune – Dr. Jayant Navarange and Dr. Sadhana Lachyan.

On the day of inauguration (15th December 2019), Jivika’s healthcare team successfully administered 27 vaccinations to the children from low-income group families. Jivika Healthcare is highly motivated to vaccinate more and more children and everyone in the family. As the more vaccinated people, the fewer opportunities a disease can spread and in-turn it will help save millions of lives.

Grand Challenges Explorations is a US $100 million initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It supports innovative thinkers worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mould in how we solve persistent global health and development challenges. Mr. Jignesh Patel’s project was one of the approximately 50 Grand Challenges Explorations for which grants were announced by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

CfHE programme is dedicated to achieving universal healthcare by igniting the spark of entrepreneurship in youth and providing them with focused training and top-notch mentorship.