Zimbabwe is battling against time to administer over 14 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines that are already in its stocks amid concerns of public complacency and hesitancy, it has been established.
There are fears the vaccines might expire before use or
become less effective as they draw closer to their best-by date.
The government on March 20 launched a Covid-19 vaccination
blitz that includes jabbing children aged 12 and above to revive the faltering
inoculation campaign after targets to vaccinate at least 70% of the population
in order to reach herd immunity by December 2021 were missed.
In March last year, Zimbabwe set targets to vaccinate 60%
of its population of nearly 16 million—translating to herd immunity—to halt the
spread of the coronavirus and re-open an economy that has been battered by two
years of lockdown restrictions.
The threshold was later reviewed upwards to 70% by the
World Health Organisation (WHO) by mid-2022.
Governments in Africa, including in Zimbabwe, have been
struggling to roll out the Covid-19 vaccination programme due to logistical
problems, hesitancy that is largely blamed on lack of information and
misinformation as well as complacency.
Investigations by The Standard in collaboration with the
Information Development Trust (IDT), a non-profit organisation that supports
journalists to investigate issues of corruption in the public sector and bad
governance, showed that Zimbabwe has received 22.4 million doses of Covid-19
vaccines since March 2020, but had only used eight million of the jabs at the
beginning of this month.
The investigations involved tracking vaccination rates and
delivery of Covid-19 vaccines since the first batch of 200 000 doses was
received on February 15, 2021.
Zimbabwe mainly bought Sinopharm and Sinovac Covid-19
vaccines from China in addition to regular donations from Beijing as we
reported from the time the vaccine rollouts began.
The country also received the same type of vaccines from
the WHO’s Covax facility. It also received donations from India’s Covaxin and
Russia’s Sputnik.
Less than 2% of all received doses have been donated.
The rest have been procured using domestic funding, which
means the country has devoted significant amounts of its health budget to
Covid-19 vaccination.
Zimbabwe’s vaccines uptake has remained low compared to the
doses in its stockpiles, data from the Health and Child Care ministry shows.
According to the ministry’s situational reports, on March
13, Zimbabwe’s first dose vaccine coverage was 45% of the target population and
29% of the total population.
About 35% of the target population was fully vaccinated or
had received two doses.
Medical experts said the fact that Zimbabwe had only
managed to administer eight million doses of the Covid-19 vaccines in one year
meant that exhausting 14 million doses would be a tall order.
Some countries in Africa are being forced to dispose of
their Covid-19 vaccines after they expired without being used.
In Nigeria up to one million Covid-19 doses are estimated
to have expired without being used in December last year.
South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo last year
had to send some of their Covid-19 vaccine doses back to manufacturers because
they could not distribute them in time.
Namibia last year warned that it may have to destroy
thousands of expired doses due to a low uptake.
Zimbabwe, despite being a beneficiary of donated vaccines,
handed 50 000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccines to Botswana in February this year
and donated another 20 000 doses to Namibia.
Agnes Mahomva, the national coordinator on government’s
response to Covid-19, said the vaccine donations were done because of
Zimbabwe’s good relations with other countries when asked if this was meant to
get rid of doses that were close to expiry.
“Zimbabwe has very good relationships with its neighbours
and some have struggled to get vaccines,” Mahomva said. “It is, therefore, only
strategic to help them.”
She said it was unlikely that the vaccines that were
already in stock would expire before use.
“Remember access to vaccines needs to be for everyone in
order to end this pandemic,” Mahomva added.
“Most of our vaccines expire at the end of 2023 and that is
the end of next year.”
Johannes Marisa, the Medical and Dental Private Health
Practitioners of Zimbabwe Association president, said ordinarily vaccine
manufacturers do not indicate expiry dates on their products, but it was common
knowledge in the medical field that vaccines lose their potency a year after
being produced.
Zimbabwe’s last vaccine deliveries were received in
September 2021.
“(Not indicating expiry dates) is done for security reasons
on the part of manufacturers, but we rightfully know that after 12 months, the
vaccines lose their potency,” Marisa said.
“So you cannot keep a vaccine for more than 12 months. So
ideally, we must try to limit the shelf life of vaccines.”
Mahomva said the government had come up with a new strategy
to increase the uptake of Covid-19 vaccines to reach the WHO targets to
vaccinate 70% of the population by mid-year.
She said Zimbabwe’s Covid-19 vaccination programme was one
of the strongest programmes in Africa.
“The country has, however, had its fair share of vaccine
uptake challenges,” Mahomva said.
“This is despite the fact that the country has plenty of
vaccines in stock.
“Uptake challenges are mostly associated with low-risk
perception, misinformation and access issues.
“The country, therefore, recently went through a
re-planning process and put in place additional vaccination strategies to
address identified challenges.”
She said innovative approaches, including outreach services
and targeted vaccination messages for key community groups, will be used in
order to address the challenges.
“The main aim of the campaign is to ramp up the vaccination
coverage in order to reach 70% of the total population by end of July 2022 in
line with the WHO’s new global target of 70% total population coverage by
mid-2022,” she said.
“The campaign is in collaboration with all stakeholders
including community and church leaders.”
She said additional vaccine doses had been procured and
paid for and were awaiting delivery once the government gives a green light to
the manufacturers.
Itai Rusike, director of the Community Working Group on
Health, said instead of donating vaccines, Zimbabwe must be pushing for a
higher uptake to effectively fight the pandemic.
“Instead of donating our vaccines to other countries, Zimbabwe needs to come up with innovative communication strategies in order to increase vaccine uptake and accelerate towards achieving the required herd immunity of vaccinating at least 70% of the population of about 13 million Zimbabweans,” he said. Standard
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