Govt to link Covid-19 vaccination data across EAC

The Ministry of Health has said it plans to link its vaccination data to the rest of East African Community (EAC) region system to allow easy verification of vaccination certificates.

During the launch of Covid-19 resurgence plan, Dr Allan Muruta, the commissioner for Integrated Epidemiology, Surveillance and Public Health Emergencies at Ministry of Health, said: “When you are vaccinated from here, you can be able to produce an electronic certificate that can be recognised within this region.”

The Ministry of Health says due to the evolving nature of the Covid-19 pandemic, use and adaptation of technology will support timely and appropriate response as well as sharing of information.

At least 706,626 people in the country have received the first dose of AstraZeneca vaccine and 34,139 have completed the two doses. The vaccination exercise started with low momentum but has picked up over time.

 To boost the vaccination programme, the Ministry of Health will carry out outreach programmes in addition to static sites.

Uganda received 964,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine and had plan to import 18 million doses from Serum Institute in India (SII).

However, due to the current explosion of the coronavirus disease in India, exportation of the vaccine was halted.

Dr Ruth Jane Aceng,  the outgoing Health minister, said other measures have been sought to buy more vaccines.

Measures

The government has paid $11m (about Shs39b) through United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) to buy more vaccines.

“In this financial year coming to an end, you will recall that Parliament passed a supplementary budget of $5m (about Shs 17.7b) that we were to pay to SII and get vaccines. Unfortunately, there was a technical delay and it didn’t happen,” Dr Aceng said on Friday.

She added:  “Subsequently, the ministry of Finance increased the money to make it $11m (about Shs39b), which we have paid through Unicef to buy more vaccines.”

In the next financial year government has availed Shs85b towards procurement of vaccines, according to Ministry of Health.

The ministry expects more vaccines in the country in two weeks time.

Currently, the National Immunisation Technical Advisory Group (NITAG) have cleared three vaccines, AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, and Sinopharm from China to be imported into the country. But Uganda also has other offers such as Pfizer, which require cold chain system that is not readily available  across the country.

Dr Aceng said they have requested the NITAG to review the option of other vaccines that have temperature challenges.