Uganda: Support Distribution Of COVID-19 Vaccines To Grassroots, WHO Urges Donors

Posted by African Examiner African News, Featured, Latest Headlines, News Around Africa Wednesday, October 20th, 2021

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – As Uganda continues to receive Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine donations, the World Health Organisation (WHO) representative said donors needed to support the distribution of the vaccines to remote areas.

Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam, WHO representative to Uganda, told reporters that developing countries need support to ensure that vaccines reach everyone including those in remote areas.

“We need support to take the vaccines to the districts for health workers to be able to do the vaccination, for monitoring, for looking into the adverse effects.

“All these things require funding and yes the government of Uganda has allocated some funds but the requirement is far higher,” he said.

Woldemariam made the remarks at a ceremony on which Uganda received a second batch of the Sinovac vaccine donated by the Chinese government.

The first batch of Sinovac arrived in July.

Alfred Driwale, head of Uganda National Expanded Programme on Immunisation, told Xinhua in an interview that distribution of vaccines was costly since donations were made in small quantities which forces trucks to make many return trips.

Driwale said the health workers also have to be retrained as different vaccines have different requirements.

“We have to train them each time on the vaccine type, cold chain requirements.

“These overheads which are required for safe delivery of vaccines are very expensive,” he said.

Uganda has so far received 6.6 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines.

As of Saturday, about 2.6 million doses have so far been administered, according to ministry of health figures.

The country aimed to vaccinate about 22 million people, or nearly half the population, in order to fully open up the economy.

Since March last year, 125,283 COVID-19 cases had been registered with 96,397 recoveries and 3,187 deaths, as of Saturday.

NAN