Govt set to roll out four new vaccines

The government plans to introduce four new vaccines into the routine immunisation schedule, an official from the Ministry of Health has said.
Dr Richard Kabanda, the Commissioner for Health Promotion, Education and Communication, said they are introducing the doses to address the emergence of new strains of diseases.
“And we are going to launch them [the vaccines] very soon,” Dr Kabanda said.
He made the remarks during an orientation workshop for members of the Uganda Parliamentary Forum on Immunization (UPFI) in Jinja City yesterday.

According to Dr Kabanda, the vaccines include a second dose of measles rubella, yellow fever, another dose of polio, as well as hepatitis B for children. 
The Hepatitis B dose will be given at birth, measles rubella at 18 months, polio will be at six weeks while yellow fever will be introduced at nine months.
According to Dr Kabanda, in April during a similar engagement in Entebbe, they discussed issues regarding immunisation and vaccination, and agreed to have regular engagements to bridge the gaps between the technical committee, the Ministry of Health and Parliament.

He also revealed that the position of Nursing Assistant will be phased out next year.
“The nursing assistants have been offering services but lately, several people have gone through medical school up to PhD level; so with effect from the next financial year, nursing assistants will be deleted from the system,” he said.
The Uganda Nurses and Midwives Council (UNMC) had as early as 2014 called for the immediate phasing out of nursing assistants.

Previous stance  
Sister Stella Josephine, then UNMC vice chairperson, said nursing assistants shouldn’t be in existence as they have enough qualified unemployed nurses to take over their positions.
Unlike enrolled nurses who undergo rigorous training in accredited institutions, nursing assistants undergo on-job training, mainly by senior doctors or principal nursing assistants, with many of them playing an integral role in providing medical care, especially in rural health centres.
Nursing assistants are mainly involved in triage [sorting out patients at reception] and operation theatres as helpers. The chairperson of UPFI, Mr Moses Walyomu, who is also Kagoma County MP, said the Ministry of Health decided to engage them as stakeholders to sensitise masses against negative propaganda.

He said: “The launch of the orientation workshop is to know where the country is and where it is heading so that as MPs, we can request for support. We are somewhere because of some of our partners such as PATH and UNICEF.”
Mr Jimmy Ameny, an official from the Uganda National Expanded Programme on Immunization (UNEPI), expressed concern over low uptake of vaccines, citing the case of Covid-19 where a section of Ugandans think the disease was treated and has ended.
He said misconceptions on social media, fatigue among the human resource and uncertainty of the length of the Covid-19 pandemic are other contributing factors to low uptake of vaccines.
“The public doesn’t know how many times they are going to vaccinate against Covid, but the truth is that Covid is here to stay and its management is going to be through vaccination,” Mr Ameny said.