Low jab uptake in Acholi worries govt

The Health ministry has instituted a technical team to mobilise people to embrace the ongoing mass Covid-19 vaccination exercise before vaccines expire.

The delegation headed by the Health minister, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, was in Gulu City at the weekend to launch the campaign in Acholi Sub-region.

Dr Aceng said the initiative aims at increasing the uptake of vaccination among the population aged 18 years and above. 

At least 900,000 people are expected to be vaccinated in one week.

The Health minister criticised Acholi leaders for failure to mobilise masses to take the jabs.

“What is our problem? We are not coming out as quickly as we must to get vaccinated. Why are we shunning vaccinations? I was the first Ugandan to be vaccinated; I am still alive, well and healthy,” Dr Aceng said.

She added: “This region is where every truck passes to go to South Sudan and many other places and the trucks have a history of carrying infections from other countries. Besides, Gulu is a business city attracting many people from South Sudan, DR Congo and they come with infections,” she said.

 Dr James Elima, the Gulu Regional Hospital director, said vaccination uptake in the Acholi sub-region is at only 45 percent, adding that the positive results are at 7.6 percent, slightly higher than the national average.

Dr Elima named Gulu City, Pader, Kitgum, and Nwoya districts as some of the Covid-19 hotspots in the region.

He added that of the total 144,000 persons above the age of 50, only 8.4 percent have been vaccinated.

 Dr Elima attributed the low turnout to misinformation on various social media platforms.
 
Idle vaccines
Daily Monitor has also established that in Gulu District alone, the Covid-19 taskforce is stuck with at least 16,000 dozes of unused AstraZeneca vaccines, which will expire on November 30.

Dr Kenneth Cana, the acting district health officer, said the low uptake of vaccines is due to reluctance, misinformation and long distances to the vaccination centres.

Mr Cana said they would embark on door-to-door vaccination and also open several vaccination centres at various parishes and marketplaces.

“As of Tuesday 23, we had 15,300 dozes of AstraZeneca batch, two which are set to expire on November 30 and another 820 dozes of AstraZeneca batch one which will expire in December. If we are to add it all, we still have close to 17,000 dozes of the vaccines that are set to expire,” he said.

On November 2, Gulu District received 20,990 dozes of AstraZeneca, 2,318 dozes of Sinovac and 2,506 dozes of Modena vaccines from the Health ministry.

Meanwhile, the current World Health Organisation (WHO) data on Covid-19 vaccines uptake in Uganda ranks the Acholi sub-region at the bottom with 45 percent after the Busoga region with 42 percent.

Acholi sub-region got a total of 185,254 doses of vaccines and of these, 64,904 got their first jabs while 18,038 got second jabs.
 Dr Aceng said she is optimistic that by the end of December, 22 million people will have been vaccinated to allow lifting of the lockdown and subsequent opening of the economy.

“Today as we talk, we have more than 15 million doses of vaccines that are being applied, by the end of December, we shall have received another 17 million doses, adequate for the over 22 million people,” she said.

The Covid-19 mass vaccination campaign, which will run countrywide, was launched in order to enable  government hit its target of 85 percent of the 22 million Ugandans vaccinated by the end of this year.