Uganda shouldn’t be a dumping site for vaccines

A headline on page three of the Daily Monitor newspaper of June 16:  “Govt to destroy 150,000 doses of Covid vaccines”, Govt to destroy 150,000 doses of Covid vaccines was not appealing to many readers.

Why would vaccines worth a whooping Shs17b be destroyed just because the consignment of the affected Sinopharm vaccines lacked temperature data loggers?

 The importance of temperature loggers is to track the adherence to storage temperature standards, which is an important component for ensuring that the vaccine effectiveness is maintained.

 But what is intriguing in this whole narrative is that Dr Medard Bitekyerezo, the chairperson of the National Drug Authority (NDA), said the Sinopharm consignment was brought into the country on March 1 without their knowledge. It was flown in by a Kenya Airways plane.

The vaccines, whose expiry date is August, had been donated to Uganda by the Mauritius government.

Dr Bitekyerezo’s lack of knowledge of  how this particular consignment of Covid-19 doses ended up in the country poses a lot of questions. Who exactly is in charge?

Surely, if such a crucial key government technocrat does not know who brought in the more than 150,000 doses of Covid vaccines, then who else would be in the know?

Such an incident explains the bigger picture of what is happening in our country. Events unfold without the knowledge of key technocrats but some powerful elements somewhere.

Despite the vaccines having been donated, a lot of taxpayers’ money has to be involved to have the same destroyed in Nakasongola. The same taxpayers’ money would have instead been used to cater for pressing needs, given the current tough economic times faced by many Ugandans.

Going forward, let this case be an eye opener for Uganda not to be a dumping ground for all sorts of donations.

Our  technocrats  need to take charge of their respective dockets. Besides costing us sums of money to destroy them, we are not even sure if the doses are still fit for human use.

The bad news of the intended destruction of such a huge vaccine consignment comes at a time when the country is also struggling to exhaust 44.7 million doses of vaccines that had largely been acquired through donations and direct government purchases.

Our call to concerned government authorities like the Resident District Commissioners, District Health Officers, is to ensure that they quickly mobilise citizens to embrace mass vaccination against Covid-19 so that all other vaccines in our custody don’t go to waste but serve their intended purchase purpose.  If this is done, it will lessen the burden on the taxpayers’ money.

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