President Yoweri Museveni has threatened to relieve all district leaders of their duties if they fail to mobilize Ugandans for vaccination.
In his address on Covid-19 yesterday, Museveni warned CAO’s RDC’s, DHOs to intensify rapid vaccination in their areas of jurisdiction to minimize the expiry of Covid-19 vaccines.
“I now direct with immediate effect that all RDCs, CAOs, and DHOs must carry out intensive mobilization for all eligible priority groups to go for vaccination. They should, in addition, ensure that no vaccines are wasted or left to expire. In any district where vaccines expire, the RDC, CAO and DHO will be dismissed.”
His statement comes amidst concerns that 67,000 AstraZeneca vaccines are set to expire at the end of September 2021. The vaccines were part of a donation from Norway.
According to records from the health ministry, most of the vaccines are in Kampala and Arua with 12,000 and 8,000 respectively while a few are scattered across other districts.
By the end of November, Uganda will have received a total of 9,684,760 doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
Among these include 3.2 million Johnson and Johnson and Sinopharm vaccines, which have been procured by the Government of Uganda through the African Union and COVAX.
Donations include 6,484,760 million vaccines from France (501,000 AstraZeneca), Belgium (344,000 AstraZeneca), China (700,000 Sinovac) and the U.S (3,488,940 Pfizer), which arrive by the end of September.
In October and November, 1,450,000 million doses will arrive, through COVAX, from Ireland and Belgium.
These vaccines, added to recent Pfizer (1,647,000 vaccines) and the 647,000 Moderna vaccine donations already in stock, would be able to vaccinate as many as 6,638,920 people fully.
So far, only 500,000 out of a total 45 million Ugandans are fully vaccinated. Over 1,000,000 people have taken their first jabs.
