People pay much attention to a draft bill ruling on the payment of compensation to victims of vaccination accidents
Dr. Tran Dac Phu, head of the Department of Preventive Medicine, said that for the first time, there has been a regulation on compensation for vaccination accidents in Vietnam. The law will take effect in 2016.
The most important content of the law is that the government will pay compensation to victims’ relatives who are heirs by law.
The law says that healthy people have died or been physically damaged because medical workers are mistaken in administering vaccines or low quality vaccine, they will receive compensation.
Insurance companies cover accidents related to vaccination injections for health insurance card holders. The government will pay for those having no health insurance card.
Noteworthy, the law also regulates compensation level. It says that if people suffer damages of 11-15 percent, patients will be supported basic salary, and it increases 0.4 percent of basic salary if the damage is from 15-80 percent. If the damage is 80 percent up, the compensation will be 30 times of the basic salary.
Additionally, people suffering vaccination accidents will enjoy the policies for disabled people.
If a person are died of vaccination accidents because of low quality vaccine or wrong process, in addition to compensation for relatives who must quit jobs to take care of them, the government will give support of funeral cost which is 10 times higher than basic salary. Along with the compensation, the government will compensate spirit damage to relatives of patients.
According to the Ministry of Health’s survey, after 30 year implementation of vaccination program, the program has helped much in preventing fatal disease. However, there have been many cases of complication and death yet very a few of them has received compensation.
By statistics, it showed that in 6 first months of the year, the country recorded over 3,600 cases of vaccination accidents including 13 serious cases in 11 cities and provinces and 12 of them died after vaccination.
Some 13 serious complication cases have not been compensated as scientific council comprising medical workers in local health centers and the Ministry concluded that 8 of them died of available diseases, accounting for 67 percent; three of them died of unknown reason, accounting for 25 percent and one died of anaphylactic shock. No case died due to vaccine quality or mistaken vaccine injection.
Dr. Tran Tuan, director of the Research and Training Centre for Community Development, said that people especially parents of children who suffer post-vaccination complication will have reaction with such conclusion as vaccine supply, transportation and preservation of vaccine, administering vaccine and investigation of vaccination accidents are all carried out by medical sector; hence, it is hard to ensure that the conclusion is objective.
Medical experts said that many reason to cause difficulties in arriving at conclusion such as parents’ refusal to carry out autopsy on their children.
Accordingly, to ensure having an objective assessment over a vaccination accident, it should have an organization or a scientific council working independently to give assessment of the vaccination accident.
Or else people will hardly receive compensation from vaccination accident.
