Bacolod City – The provincial government of Negros Occidental is now eyeing incentives for senior citizens to convince them to get vaccinated.
Provincial Inter Agency Task Force action officer Rayfrando Diaz yesterday admitted of a low turnout in the vaccination of senior citizens in the province, delaying the downgrade of Negros Occidental alert level from 2 to 1.
Because of this, Diaz said that they are planning to launch house-to-house vaccination, especially in rural areas.
Diaz considers it a challenge for the provincial government to convince senior citizens to go to vaccination centers because of inaccessibility and difficulties for them to travel.
With this development, Diaz said they will tap Barangay Health Workers (BHW) to help their respective local health units in convincing and educating senior citizens to get vaccinated for their own protection.
“Unless the percentage of unvaccinated seniors will go down, it may take a long time for us to go out of Alert Level 2,” Diaz pointed out.
The provincial government of Negros Occidental is now proposing incentives to encourage senior citizens to avail of vaccination by expanding coverage of the Negros Occidental Comprehensive Health Care Program (NOCHP).
As stipulated in NOCHP regulations, only the head of family is registered to avail of the program, with members of his family as beneficiaries, with P5,000 medical coverage.
Under the proposed scheme, senior citizens couples will both be registered as NOCHP members, with medical coverage of ₱ 10,000, Diaz said. (Gilbert Bayoran via The Visayan Daily Star, photo courtesy NOPIO)