Africa-Press – Uganda. The Ministry of Health has launched a mass Covid-19 vaccination campaign in Ankole sub-region, with a target of vaccinating 1.6 million people.
Currently, the 13 districts of Ankole, including Mbarara City, have been able to vaccinate 130,000 people out of the estimated 4.1m people in the region.
Officiating at the launch of the exercise in Mbarara City on Monday, Health minister Dr Jane Ruth Aceng said Uganda is performing poorly in Covid-19 vaccination despite being ranked highly in previous vaccinations against measles and rubella.
“Currently, we stand at 6.8 million people who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 and our target is 22 million.
This is not a good performance. We have been having low coverage because previously, we have been leaving it to health workers. This is partly the reason we are launching this campaign to rally everyone, especially leaders, to join the sensitisation campaign to see our people get vaccinated,” Dr Aceng said.
Dr Aceng said they will have 100 vaccination centres in every district and every health worker is expected to attend to 100 people every day to achieve the national target of 22million people.
“We have delivered enough drugs for this campaign, we want you, leaders, to intensively mobilise, go door-to-door, even if people are in gardens, go for them. We have distributed lots of information, and translated it into local languages for people not to get misinformed,” Dr Aceng said.
The World Health Organisation country representative, Dr Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam, rallied Ugandans to embrace Covid-19 vaccination as they have always done with other diseases.
The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Dr Diana Atwiine, said among the vaccines brought to the region is Johnson and Johnson, which should be administered to people in hard-to-reach areas.
The Rubirizi District Chairperson, Mr Slyvester Agubashongorera, said the Covid 19-vaccination exercise in the region had been hindered by a shortage of vaccines.
“The challenge has been lack of vaccines. We have not been having Covid-19 vaccines for the last two weeks,” Mr Agubashongorera said.
Mbarara City mayor Robert Mugabe Kakyebezi said the challenge in Covid-19 vaccination uptake is that the exercise has been taking place only at health centre IIIs.
“In some areas, a health centre III is located more than 4kms away and people have been reluctant to walk all that distance,” Mr Kakyebezi said.
The Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital Director, Dr Celestine Barigye, said currently, they have five Covid-19 patients admitted to the facility, while 1,140 are under home-based care.
Ankole region has lost 226 people to Covid-19 since March, 2020, when the pandemic was reported in the country.
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