Israeli health fund at the center of the vaccine push

“If the rabbits allow, I’m not asking questions at all,” the Torah scholar Torah told AFP at a clinic in Haredi city, Bnei Brak.

The initial distribution of Israeli vaccines appears to be growing successfully, with around two million citizens having received the first of two required injections of the Pfizer-BioNTech injection, a pace that has been widely described as the fastest in the world.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who opposes another re-election contest and corruption test over the next few weeks – has sought to highlight a personal place in the inclusion campaign.

Netanyahu in particular has stressed his talks with members from Pfizer and Moderna that he says have ensured that Israel will have enough supplies to vaccinate all over-16s by the end of March.

Media outlets have reported that Israel paid above market price to Pfizer to ensure adequate supply. The health ministry declined to comment on these reports.

But experts have said that, in addition to vaccine provision, much of the responsibility for the smooth distribution seems to lie with the country’s health fund, known as health maintenance organizations.

Four Israeli HMOs keep detailed information about patients in their care and can deliver health messages directly to them, by text message if necessary, experts said.

Strategies to promote vaccination have been adapted to specific communities, which for Haredim as Barlow has meant engaging with major rabbits from the outset, ensuring that They fans to get the injection.

Across the country, HMOs have been credited with quickly generating lists of vaccine candidates, organized by priority, and personally contacting them to come for a shot.

And, experts have stressed, a key difference between Israel’s non-invasive coronavirus response and the vaccination effort is that the HMOs, not the government, control inoculation.

“I think the government has learned its lesson and is allowing the HMOs to do what they know,” said Dov Chernichovsky, head of the health policy program at the Taub Center think tank.

Chernichovsky accused the government of not weakening its pandemic response by not relying enough on the HMOs, especially when it came to trial, an area where he claimed to be separation of the “abnormal” HMOs.

“The state decided not to use the HMOs in the first place, which was a big mistake,” he said. “Someone came to the senses.”

HMO membership is mandatory for all Israeli citizens. People can change twice a year if they are dissatisfied with their service.

Unlike traditional insurance companies, Israeli HMOs are non-profit and play a direct role in medical service delivery, hiring physicians and running clinics as well as covering care costs.

The operating model was first established by living in Ottoman-era Palestine, Chernichovsky said.

Meuhedet HMO chief executive Sigal Regev Rosenberg said the detailed information held about patients allowed her group to quickly generate vaccine records.

“We immediately set up a data system that identified who should be called first priority, who was second priority, and who could wait. The whole thing took 10 minutes,” Rosenberg said.

With Haredim, HMOs worked with major rabbits “from the beginning of the work,” she said.

However, Rosenberg noted that more work was still needed to ensure widespread vaccination among Arab Israelis.

A doctor with the coronavirus unit in East Jerusalem, Ali al-Jibrini, told AFP that “Palestinians in the region had little interest in getting the vaccine”, blaming level of misinformation on social media.

“But there has been something of an awakening and the numbers are starting to increase,” he said.

Despite Israel ‘s success in vaccinating their own people, criticism has risen about Jerusalem’ s position on the Palestinian vaccination in the West Bank and Gaza.

Rights groups such as Amnesty International have invoked international law to argue that Israel must provide vaccinations to the entire Palestinian people.

Under the terms of Oslo Accords, however, the Palestinian Authority is responsible for the health care of its own population and has reiterated that it receives its own vaccines through the DA scheme.

On Monday, Ramallah announced contracts with four producers, including Russian manufacturers Sputnik V.

The PA has not publicly requested Israeli assistance in securing supplies, nor have Hamas Islamists, who control the Gaza Strip.

Nadav Davidovitch, director of the public health school at Ben-Gurion University in Be’er Sheva, said that supporting Palestinian vaccines was not only “the morally right thing to do, but that it was also for the interest of Israel.

“We live side by side, and if we want to create herd protection, it’s important that they get the vaccine too,” said Davidovitch, who also sits on a panel advising the government on pandemic response.