TEXT 1: AFRICA’S LACK OF VACCINE IS NOT THE ONLY REASON FOR SLOW VACCINE

ROLLOUT

As Africa records the world’s lowest COVID-19 vaccination rate, the emergence of more
contagious variants increases, as well as the risk for the first generation of vaccines to become
ineffective. While insufficient COVID-19 vaccine supply across the continent has contributed
to a low vaccination rate, Project HOPE found that several factors have contributed to a slow
5 vaccine rollout in Africa.
“There is a combination of challenges attributable to very low vaccine rollouts across Africa,”
says Asefa Wondwossen, Deputy Regional Director for Africa at Project HOPE. “We found
out that even when some countries received vaccine doses, they were not always able to
vaccinate en masse.”
10 Through its involvement in the region, including COVID and vaccine science trainings for
health workers, Project HOPE identified several changes and gaps contributing to a low
vaccination rate in Africa. While insufficient COVID-19 vaccine supplies remains a top issue
for african countries, other reported issues include the lack of funds, lack of trained
professionals and hesitancy among the population to get the vaccine. In addition, many
15 countries were not able to reach priority groups because they are not equipped with up-to-date
registration systems that allow to locate and register these priority individuals. Finally, because
of a severe lack of vaccine doses, many countries were using different vaccines, which created
challenges such as keeping track of who get what type of vaccine, differing logistics and storage
requirements and training vaccinators to give different vaccines.
20 “Identifying the challenges that have led to a slow vaccine rollout is only a first step. Countries
must now address these challenges to get rapidly more vaccines into people’s arms,”
Wondwossen says. “Every vaccine dose is like liquid gold. No country can afford to waste
vaccine doses when variants are spreading and lives are at stake.”
In order to speed up COVID-19 vaccine rollout, Project HOPE recommends countries to take
25 a three-fold approach : building coordination and leadership capacity at the national and sub-
national level, training health care workers and vaccinators on the administration of different
vaccines as wells as monitoring and managing adverse effects, and developing tactics to
improve community awareness on vaccine safety and address hesitancy.
As of june 2nd 2021, Africa had administered 59% of its vaccine supply, which translates to
30 only 1.86% and 0.51% of the population receiving the first and second doses of the COVID-19
vaccine respectively. For Africa, the aim is to vaccinate at least 20% of the population by
providing up to 600 million doses by the end of 2021.

https://reliefweb.int › report › world 14 June 2021