Refugees missing out on Covid vaccination – Report

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Refugees missing out on Covid vaccination - Report
Refugees missing out on Covid vaccination - Report

Africa-PressUganda. Refugees and internally displaced people, who are at high risk of contracting Covid-19, are the lowest prioritised group for vaccination, a new report by World Vision indicates.

The report, conducted in eight countries, including Uganda, warns that Covid-19 is now surging in lower income countries that do not have the resources needed to contain the virus, and protect their own populations.

The report said despite identifying refugees as a priority group and targeting them as part of the national vaccine rollout, Uganda is among nations struggling to climb the vaccination ladder with their health systems overwhelmed due to another wave of the pandemic.

The report said with just about 800,000 of its own citizens vaccinated, Uganda is constrained to cover the 1.4 million refugees.

A couple of years ago, Uganda launched the integrated refugee response plans in health and education. Under these programmes, government was expected to plan for both refugees and citizens with allocations made in the national budgets.

Uganda hosts nearly 1.5 million refugees and at least 398 refugees have tested positive for coronavirus, with 384 recoveries and seven deaths in the settlements since the outbreak was reported in March last year, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) figures.

Some 289 refugee humanitarian workers tested positive for Covid-19, with 287 recoveries and one death across the 13 refugee hosting districts in the country.

At the end of April, Uganda launched vaccination of refugees, but it is not clear how many have been vaccinated. Both officials from the UNHCR and the Ministry of Health were not available to explain how many refugees have been vaccinated.

The Health permanent secretary, Dr Diana Atwine, and the ministry’s spokesperson, Mr Emmanuel Ainebyoona, were unavailable to explain how the ministry is handling the vaccination .

The report stated that only one of 1,914 refugees surveyed in Uganda, Brazil, Colombia, DR Congo, Jordan, Peru, Turkey, and Venezuela had received a Covid-19 vaccine, yet almost half of them say they are willing to take the vaccine when availed. Ms Mary Njeri, the refugee response director at World Vision Uganda, said more must be done to vaccinate the refugees.

“With less than 1 per cent of Ugandans vaccinated, it is a challenge to reach the refugees, but extra effort must be made to prioritise the refugees because they face the highest risk from Covid-19 given the confined space they live in and the communal facilities they share,” Ms Njeri said.

She said almost 60 per cent of the refugees in Uganda are children, and many have been separated from family, and are at risk of violations, including child trafficking, forced labour, and forced marriage.

“We must act now and commit to protect them, and the equitable distribution of vaccines is one way to protect these vulnerable children,” she said.

“The Covid-19 vaccine race has exposed an ever-growing health gap between the world’s ‘haves’ and ‘have nots,” the report stated.

The survey said 68 per cent of the respondents had not even heard of plans for vaccinations in their communities and almost half (47 per cent) thought they were not eligible or did not know they were.

Another 40 per cent of respondents felt that children in the community were less safe while 68 per cent said they cannot meet healthcare needs.

A 2020 Global Trends Report recently released by UNHCR indicates that Uganda remains the largest refugee-hosting country in Africa, with nearly 1.5 million refugees in the country.

More than 860,000 of the refugees are children, mostly from South Sudan and DR Congo.

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