The illustrative photo shows the Nuvaxovid vial photographed at the start of vaccination with the Nuvaxovid vaccine, at the Pacheco test and vaccination center in Brussels on March 3, 2022. The Novavax Nuvaxovid vaccine is given to others with the highest threat of allergic reactions to having corona vaccines, or other people who have experienced side effects after a first injection. PHOTOS | AFP
Up to 40 million COVID-19 vaccines may be wasted in East Africa as the fight against the deadly coronavirus slows down due to apathy and logistical issues.
Countries in the region, once competitive buyers of vaccines while the wealthy West hoarded them for their populations, now have stockpiles of doses they can’t distribute because of anti-vaccine sentiment and a lack of vaccination programs.
The “good” challenge has most commonly held up in Uganda, but reflects the general lethargy in the East African region, where thousands have died as the region struggled to buy vaccines from reluctant manufacturers.
The number of deaths, infections and hospitalizations has fallen to manageable levels. But that means that few are interested in taking the hit and those who do do so because they have no choice.
Expires in 4 months
Uganda’s fitness ministry says it has a stockpile of 13. 4 million vaccines that expire in 4 months due to an unfounded belief of the vaccine’s effects.
The country stands to lose massive sums if those vaccines expire before they have been used. Some expire in August and September, according to Dr. Brown. Diana Atwine, Permanent Secretary of Health.
She told Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee this week that other people are no longer motivated to get vaccinated.
Uganda is waiting for a solution to this crisis because it sells or gives away the vials, as many other African countries had accumulated as a preventive measure against the deadly virus.
“All African countries have covid-19 vaccines at the same time,” Dr. Atwine told parliamentarians, mentioning Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan as stranded spouse states with millions of vaccines.
“We were recently in South Africa and found out they had vaccines,” he added.
Logistical challenges
Uganda’s government has worked hard to increase vaccination rates among its citizens, but demanding situations such as vaccine hesitancy, shortages of vaccines where they are needed, and logistical difficulties in reaching remote locations have slowed progress.
In Kenya, at least one million doses may be eliminated soon, as they are expected to expire next month. The figure can rise to 4 million, if you use what is in the points of sale.
East Africa understands that a downward trend in vaccine intake is driving the imaginable destruction of vaccine doses at retail outlets across the country.
Fewer vaccines
Kenya recently administered less than two hundred doses of vaccines per day, up from 2000 per day when waves of virus strains swept the country.
In fact, most of those who get the bites are travelers to destinations where visitors want to get vaccinated. According to the World Health Organization, at the EAC, Tanzania leads in vaccine administration, even in the face of initial Covid denial and anti-vaccine sentiment among the population, with an estimated 39 million doses distributed.
Rwanda and Uganda distributed 26 million doses each, Kenya 23 million, Congo thirteen million, South Sudan 3 million and Burundi 35,000.
Figures from Kenya’s Ministry of Health imply that of the 23 million doses administered, more than 19 million were administered to adults over the age of 18 and 3 million to young people aged 12 to 18.
Booster dose
The number of booster doses exceeded 1. 7 million, and 37% of the other people won all the doses.
Kenya bought and won 27. 8 million doses in 2021, meaning there are around four million doses in the country waiting to be used. In March, the Ministry of Health forced the destruction of 840,000 expired doses of AstraZeneca.
Through government donations and purchases, Uganda has procured 48,897,520 doses by the end of December 2022. Of these, 22,615,954 are believed to be in national medical stores.
Only 6% of young people aged 12 to 17 gained at least two doses of the vaccine, with 59% of those over 18.
This falls short of the national target of vaccinating 28. 5 million eligible Ugandans (22 million adults and 6. 5 million children).
Power vs expiration
According to the WHO, the shelf life of a vaccine reflects how long it maintains its potency and stability at a given garage temperature and its efficacy. Shelf life is used to identify the expiration date of each batch of vaccine.
However, expiration dates do not protect the vaccine. On the contrary, it reflects power.
“The potency drops dramatically after the expiration date, slowly decreases. Usually, the stated expiration date is part of the garage time after which it begins to lose potency,” says the WHO.
Kenya Doctors and Dentists Union undersecretary Dennis Miskellah said the biggest loss when vaccines are destroyed is not the burden of actual destruction, but the value paid for a blow that will now be wasted, as well as the possible charge of physical care for someone who would possibly now get sick or die of headaches from a preventable disease.
“We want to get this vaccine quickly. It’s about you as an individual. I worry that we are destroying what might have stored a lifetime of serious end results from a disease,” Dr. Miskellah said.
As part of CDC Africa’s strategic response to the pandemic, it partnered with the Mastercard Foundation to identify the Save Lives and Livelihoods program in 2021 to scale up immunization on the continent to achieve a 70% policy in three years.
Routine immunization
The first beneficiaries of this programme were Tanzania, South Sudan, Cameroon, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Lesotho, Morocco and Zambia. This is how Tanzania, which arrived late, surpassed other EAC partners in the number of vaccinated.
The programme has fostered the status quo of new vaccination centres and the strengthening of existing CVCs to expand vaccination points for populations. Likewise, the logistics of supplying vaccines from the central bloodless rooms to the centers, adding the mandatory auxiliaries for its operation, has been put in place.
Tanzania has now surpassed the 50% mark.
In a March 17 statement, Dr. Derrick Sim, acting managing director of the Covax facility, Dodoma has maintained a sustained vaccination deployment over the past several months to take the plunge.
“Tanzania has developed very innovative approaches on how to implement COVID-19 vaccines and also catch up with the regime’s vaccination programs. The progress and commitment of the government and partners to protect others from COVID-19 is commendable and demonstrates that countries can address immunization priorities at the same time,” said Dr. Sim.
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