https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/oped/letters/vaccination-is-the-secret-to-our-resilience-3493684
If Uganda doesn’t vaccinate Ugandans, the pandemic will continue. According to the Minister for Health, Dr. Achieng Ruth, “we are not responding to the pandemic at the speed that we should”, wealthy countries are hoarding the vaccines and yet because of its global impact, COVID-19 ideally should be treated on a global response other than single-nation response. If countries do not start sharing the excess supply that is available, the pandemic will continue and will come with new variants.
COVAX an international consortium
comprising of the World Health Organisation and UNICEF have a goal to
distribute two billion vaccines by the end of 2021. The COVAX facility is an
initiative that provides developing nations with access to vaccines. It is
expected to cover only 10 percent of the population with essential workers of
first priority. Therefore, developing countries have to find alternative
sources for the vaccines in order to continue the drive to herd immunity.
In March 2021, 864,000 doses of
COVID-19 vaccine arrived in Uganda. Amidst many challenges in Uganda, the task
under the COVAX team was to vaccinate essential workers across Uganda. The
doses were enough to vaccinate 425,000 people which is under one percent of the
population. Uganda still needs millions of doses to hit the target of
vaccinating the majority of its population and that is where our efforts as a
country should be concerted for the next months to have herd immunity for the
pandemic to be brought under control.
As a country, we need to rally
our efforts around vaccination. While other nations are going back to live as
normal, for us we are in our houses hiding from the virus. The world is
certainly moving on and leaving us in a pandemic that was not our making and
all of a sudden it feels like the HIV/AIDS era yet again. We can do something
about it so that we can achieve at least 70 percent vaccination levels for life
to go back to normal.
The pandemic is quickly becoming
an African problem, not just at a national level but even globally. Africa is
quickly being sunk into a corner where we will be fighting this pandemic in
isolation, travel bans will remove us from the global connectivity and yet
again stay at the mercy of countries whose medicine has advanced enough for
them to produce more than enough vaccines for their citizens.
With the allegation of Ugandans getting water
instead of the actual vaccine, fears grow for our population as to when we will
be able to get genuine vaccines so that we can leverage our immunity and health
in the presence of the pandemic. We need to objectively look for solutions that
will ensure that life can go on and Ugandans can go back to working and
building the economy. Otherwise, we risk losing more Ugandans to the coronavirus and also crippling the economy with total business shutdowns while using
lockdowns as the remedial measure other than mass vaccination.
Tricia Gloria Nabaye
Resident Research Associate: GREAT
LAKES INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES
