MEDICAL professionals yesterday said they still had not been trained on how to administer the COVID-19 vaccines despite the country expecting its first batch today, a consignment of 200 000 doses of the Sinopharm inoculation donated by China.
The government also procured another 600 000 doses of the
same vaccine, but the second lot is expected in the country early next month.
Authorities yesterday said when the vaccine arrives in the
country, it would be subjected to 48-hour verification by the Medicines Control
Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ) before distribution, with medical professionals
among the first beneficiaries.
But the president of the Zimbabwe Nurses Association
(Zina), Enock Dongo said they were never informed nor were they consulted about
the vaccines to be brought into the country.
He said nurses still did not know the type of vaccine that
would be dispatched to the vaccination centres, adding that they were also not
trained on how to administer the jab, or made aware of possible side effects.
“Generally nurses are not aware of it, and none have yet
been formally trained to administer it even though there is a specific
department to do that,” Dongo said.
“This is wrong because there is a huge information gap. How
then are we expected to administer the vaccine to the public, if we are unable
to tell them whether there will be any side effects or not?”
Dongo said the government should have consulted
stakeholders first, before the rollout exercise, as well as widely inform the
nation about the programme.
“We as frontline workers and nurses particularly, are
ill-prepared. We have not received training to be able to also pass on the
information to our clients. There is
need for the government to ensure that the district centres are well
capacitated to store the vaccines,” Dongo said.
He said health workers would be forced to take the vaccine
simply because there was no other option to keep them safe. “We tried to get
the government to de-congest hospitals
for our safety, and also to provide adequate personal
protective equipment (PPE) but it did not work. So our hopes were pinned on the
vaccine, but we do not know what it is,” Dongo said.
Executive president of the Medical and Dental Private
Practitioners of Zimbabwe, Johannes Marisa expressed doubt that the Medicines
Control Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ) would manage to complete the verification
exercise for the Chinese drug from Sinopharm within 48 hours.
“We would have been more comfortable if the timeline was
longer. The first 200 000 doses are a donation from China. The Chinese vaccine,
like the Russian Sputnik vaccine, is a vector vaccine. Both the Moderna and
Pfizer vaccines are MRNA vaccines, which means that they need very low storage
temperatures of up to -70 degrees Celsius,” Marisa said.
“The government was left with no options except to look for
vaccines that are feasible in terms of storage and distribution, considering
the fact that we need to maintain the cold chain. AstraZeneca, Sputnik V, and
Johnson & Johnson need storage temperatures of between 2 degrees to 8
degrees, which can be achieved even in remote areas. So I think the storage and
transportation logistics pushed our government to hastily acquire these vector
vaccines,” he said.
While reports suggest that the Sinopharm drug has not been
tested in Africa south of the Sahara, it is believed to be working well in
Morocco and other Asian countries such as Pakistan, Turkey and the Americas.
Last week, deputy Health minister John Mangwiro, said the
ministry was training its staff for the eventual vaccine rollout. The vaccine
requires to be kept within temperatures of about 2- 8 degrees Celsius, and
Zimbabwe has said it has adequate cold chain facilities to store the vaccines
in order to begin the inoculation programme.
The government has already listed health workers, security
forces, civil servants and legislators as the priority groups in the
immunisation roll out.
Each person requires two shots of the jab, and China’s
donated vaccines will inoculate around 100 000 people.
Zimbabwe reportedly has about 20 000 health workers,
including doctors and nurses.A statement released last week by the government
said the drugs would be taken to the national vaccination centres, provincial
centres, district centres, clinics and hospitals.
South Africa, a fortnight ago took delivery of one million
doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from India.
However, health experts in that country warned that the
vaccine might not work effectively against the highly contagious variant that
is prevalent in SA and likely driving the surge in new infections in Zimbabwe.
This has resulted in officials in that country announcing
that they intended to put the mass vaccination programme – the largest in
Africa so far, on hold before it even began.
Meanwhile, the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe
(PTUZ) secretary-general, Raymond Majongwe said although they were not
consulted about the vaccine, individual members within the teaching profession
had the right to make their own decisions on taking the vaccine.
“We are going to engage the general membership on the way forward. It’s about people’s private wellness and health, and so we can’t impose it without guidance from our members,” Majongwe said.
ZIMTA secretary-general, Goodwill Taderera said its
individual members should decide on whether to take the vaccine, adding that
their only problem would be if teachers were used as guinea pigs.
“We believe that this intervention is necessary and
important. If at all our members participate, it must be at a personal
level. Zimta believes that it would not
want to frog march its teachers to get vaccinated. What is important for our
government is to take all the necessary steps that whenever the drug is
administered, it is safe to its citizens,” Taderera said.
Government plans to inoculate approximately 10 million
citizens to achieve head immunity. As of Saturday, Zimbabwe had reported 35 104
infections and 1 398 deaths. Newsday
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