Teachers throng Kampala Covid vaccination centres
A health worker administers Covid-19 jabs to one of the teachers who turned up at Bat Valley Primary School for the vaccination exercise. PHOTO | FILE
Covid-19 vaccination using the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccines started yesterday in Kampala with high turn-up of teachers at the centres.
Ms Christine Namara, a teacher at Lugogo Vocational Training Institute, who spoke to Daily Monitor after taking her first jab at Bat Valley Primary School, said it has been a hurdle to access vaccines.
“I went to Kasangati [Health Centre] earlier but they told me they were only vaccinating those who were seeking the second dose. But [when] I came here today [yesterday] and waited patiently, I was vaccinated,” she said yesterday.
Covid-19 vaccination started in the country on March 10, but many people, including teachers, have not been able to access the jabs because the doses are too few.
More than 21.9 million Ugandans have been scrambling for about two million doses of vaccines the country has so far acquired through donations.
The current vaccination of teachers at designated centres in schools followed a special agreement between the ministries of Education and that of Health to ring-fence Sinovac for teachers, critical staff and students in tertiary institutions.
The agreement is to allow for reopening of schools because the government has pegged it on sufficient vaccination of the said category.
The government has warned that teachers who are not vaccinated risk losing their jobs when schools reopen.
Mr Filbert Baguma, the Uganda National Teachers’ Union (Unatu) secretary general secretary, said : “They [experts] are saying we are entering the third wave. Let us get vaccinated so that we can see the schools reopening and children who are facing abuses [because of closure of schools] also get back to school.”
