Africa-Press – Tanzania. ON Tuesday this week, President Samia Sauhu Hassan flagged off Covid-19 vaccination campaign that is aimed at protecting Tanzanians from the adverse health effects of the world ravaging pandemic.
It is the day when the world witnessed President Samia, Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa and other dignitaries receiving their anti-Covid-19 jabs, an initiative that, to a large extent, helped dispel vaccine fears.
Speaking during the launching of the vaccination campaign President Samia clearly stated that, being a Tanzanian citizen, she has lived with a number of vaccines in her body, some of which were administered during her childhood.
What President Samia said on the material is a fact that every Tanzanian knows. Tanzanian children undergo a number of vaccines before turning 5 years.
Pregnant women too have been getting both tetanus and diphtheria toxoids (Td) and tetanus toxoid (TT) vaccines worldwide since the 1960s to prevent neonatal tetanus.
Td and TT vaccines administered during pregnancy have not been shown to harm either the mother or baby/fetus.
Individuals who have been travelling abroad have always been demanded to produce Yellow Fever vaccine certificates at airports, short of which they would be prevented from flying out of the country.
The point we are trying to drive home here is that all these vaccines are generated or produced by the same nations or people who are now producing Covid-19 vaccines against which some individuals, for reasons best known to themselves, are negatively speaking about.
History shows such anti-vaccine arguments have been touted since the 18th century (i.e. for over 200 years now), even before Edward Jenner began his efforts to develop a small pox vaccine in the 1790s. It doesn’t click into the mind when we hear some individuals keep on bombarding with claims of doom and gloom those who get vaccinated, as well as the vaccinators.
Predictions include death, if not immediate, then in two, three, or 10 -year period they or their off springs will turn into zombies or experience loss of fertility for the current and future generations.
Some doomsayers claim that vaccination is aimed at wiping out the whole human race; or, certainly all Africans, for a new crop of aliens, who may or may not be human beings!
If developed nations had an ill intention on us, especially on our health, they would have come with a well calculated plan through the same vaccines we have been receiving since childhood.
As Tanzanians, we must take the latest WHO call seriously that wants the world to know that Delta variant of Covid-19 should serve as a warning that must be suppressed quickly before it mutates again into something even worse.
