Africa-Press – Botswana. The most remote and hard to reach areas of the country will benefit from the cold storage equipment donated by Africa Centre for Disease Control (CDC).
The equipment include cold boxes, vaccine carriers, ice packs, ice lined refrigerators and generators worth over P1 million.
Receiving the equipment, Assistant Minister of Health, Mr Sethomo Lelatisitswe expressed gratitude to the Mastercard Foundation for donating the equipment through the Africa CDC saving lives and livelihood initiative.
He noted that during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Africa CDC initiative contributed significantly to the vaccination coverage of the country when the health system was overwhelmed and fatigued from prolonged response activities.
He said the initiative provided the much needed recourse under the Ntlo le Ntlwana integrated vaccination campaign, adding that it was aimed at ensuring that the hard to reach population and those who could not leave their houses to vaccine sites were not left behind.
He also noted that it served as a vaccination catch up for children who missed their under five vaccines.
Mr Lelatisitswe also said the collaboration had continued and that in September a local laboratory was designated as a World Health Organisation (WHO) collaboration centre.
He further said Africa CDC saw it fit to donate a genomic sequencing machine to the laboratory.
The assistant minister also said the country had made deliberate efforts to strengthen its emergency, prevention, preparedness and response structures through the support of the Africa CDC.
He added that Botswana was grateful for the collaboration and that it was in line with the country’s national health priorities as well as President Mokgweetsi Masisi’s Reset Agenda.
Handing over the equipment, UNICEF country representative, Dr Joan Matji said the equipment would ensure that vaccines were delivered to the most remote and hard to reach areas of the country.
She also said UNICEF was happy to capacitate health workers who would be managing the cold chain equipment.
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