{"id":6529,"date":"2021-03-18T11:40:14","date_gmt":"2021-03-18T11:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/?p=6529"},"modified":"2021-03-18T11:02:27","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T11:02:27","slug":"if-covid-had-hit-uganda-in-its-golden-1990s-vaccine-age-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/if-covid-had-hit-uganda-in-its-golden-1990s-vaccine-age-2","title":{"rendered":"If Covid had hit Uganda in its golden 1990s vaccine age\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press<\/a> – Uganda<\/a>. <\/strong><\/span>By Monday, only 1,015 people in Uganda had been vaccinated against Covid-19, far short of the government\u2019s own target of 150,000.<\/p>\n

This is more than a week since the country received 964,000 donated doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines. According to a report in Daily Monitor, the Ministry of Health said the low number was due to delays in delivering the vaccines and other essential materials to most districts. Additionally, that some vaccination data was yet to come in.<\/p>\n

Vaccination distribution generally is a logistic nightmare, even in rich industrialised nations. A few countries like South Africa, and in the region Rwanda, which is closing in on 300,000 vaccinations, hit the ground running, but Uganda is likely to struggle. Why is this the case? In her book Another Fine Mess:<\/p>\n

America, Uganda and the War on Terror, the dogged American professor of human rights and public health, Helen C. Epstein, who annoyed our Big People over the years with her writing, argues that it is down to repression and corruption.<\/p>\n

In a bare-knuckled opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times on October 15, 2017, she wrote: \u201cI teach and write about public health in Africa. For years, something about Uganda stumped me.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince 2000, health services have improved in most African countries, but Uganda\u2019s progress lags. Yet Uganda has a remarkable medical history. Well before colonial times, the Baganda, Uganda\u2019s largest tribe, could distinguish plague from smallpox; Baganda traditional surgeons performed caesarean sections in the 19th Century, when Europeans considered them too difficult and dangerous. During the 1950s and 1960s, Ugandans helped pioneer treatment for childhood cancers and malnutrition. When Singapore was looking to reform its health system in the 1960s, it sent a delegation to Uganda.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, Uganda\u2019s health system is a shamble, even though American taxpayers plow hundreds of millions of dollars annually into medical projects there. Bats, snakes and other wildlife have taken up residence in once-functioning rural clinics. Uganda\u2019s children die at twice the rate of those in neighbouring Rwanda and Kenya, and those who survive are among the least likely in the world to complete elementary school.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main referral hospital is so dysfunctional that women giving birth there are seven times more likely to die than when Idi Amin was Uganda\u2019s president in the 1970s. Meanwhile, Uganda\u2019s government spends $150 million a year flying the president and other elites out of the country when they need medical treatment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s become clear to me that corruption, combined with the government\u2019s callous indifference to the plight of ordinary people, explains these problems.\u201d It\u2019s a long piece, but the conclusion one draws is that corruption diverts resources and medicines to private gain, and the people in charge will kill the systems that distribute things like vaccines because it is competition.<\/p>\n

And, secondly, if you are busy clobbering and torturing your people, you don\u2019t have the empathy necessary to invest in getting vaccines to them. But this is only part of the story. Something unique happened when Uganda announced its Covid-19 vaccine. It said private health establishments would also be able to give vaccines, ie at a commercial rate.<\/p>\n

So far, no African country has been so publicly specific about such a role in the Covid-19 for for-profit health entities. However, it was an important signal that it knows previous vaccine successes in Uganda, that President Yoweri Museveni likes to boast about, were not a wholly government affair. They wouldn\u2019t have happened if that were the case.<\/p>\n

From about 1988, but particularly between 1994 and 1998, there was an impressive vaccination wave in Uganda. The star of the show, without doubt, was the United Nation\u2019s United Nations International Children\u2019s Emergency Fund (UNICEF).<\/p>\n

In the lead-up to, and after the end of the Cold War, the UN, and indeed other institutions like the World Bank, went through a period when they appointed a wave of cheerful enlightened leaders. Uganda had quite a few of them then, and they brought their outlook to bear on vaccinations.<\/p>\n

There was also a dramatic rebirth of Rotary Clubs, a result of a mix of optimism from an economic boom, euphoria about the building a \u201cnew Uganda\u201d as the making of the 1995 Constitution got away, and also a safe haven for public engagement in a one-party era. The Rotary Club, and other NGOs, just drowned this country in vaccination drives.<\/p>\n

This massive participation was made possible because it was also the internationalist and quasi-enlightened phase of the Museveni government that made space for them; credit has to be given.<\/p>\n

However today, the Uganda State is more ham-fisted than ever, is very hostile to civil society, and is unusually municipal in its mindset. Recreating the near-miracle of the 1990s and early 2000\u2019s vaccination, is a tall order.<\/p>\n

Mr Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer and curator of the \u201cWall of Great Africans\u201d. Twitter@cobbo3<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Uganda. By Monday, only 1,015 people in Uganda had been vaccinated against Covid-19, far short of the government\u2019s own target of 150,000. This is more than a week since the country received 964,000 donated doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines. According to a report in Daily Monitor, the Ministry of Health said the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":6528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,8],"tags":[233,240,234],"class_list":["post-6529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-files","category-homepage-english","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-uganda","tag-uganda"],"yoast_head":"\nIf Covid had hit Uganda in its golden 1990s vaccine age\u2026 - Uganda<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By Monday, only 1,015 people in Uganda had been vaccinated against Covid-19, far short of the government\u2019s own target of ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/if-covid-had-hit-uganda-in-its-golden-1990s-vaccine-age-2\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"If Covid had hit Uganda in its golden 1990s vaccine age\u2026\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Monday, only 1,015 people in Uganda had been vaccinated against Covid-19, far short of the government\u2019s own target of ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/if-covid-had-hit-uganda-in-its-golden-1990s-vaccine-age-2\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Uganda\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-03-18T11:40:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/uganda\/sites\/34\/2021\/03\/img-6053332ac077d.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"480\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/if-covid-had-hit-uganda-in-its-golden-1990s-vaccine-age-2#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/if-covid-had-hit-uganda-in-its-golden-1990s-vaccine-age-2\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"If Covid had hit Uganda in its golden 1990s vaccine age\u2026\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-03-18T11:40:14+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/if-covid-had-hit-uganda-in-its-golden-1990s-vaccine-age-2\"},\"wordCount\":825,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/if-covid-had-hit-uganda-in-its-golden-1990s-vaccine-age-2#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/uganda\/sites\/34\/2021\/03\/img-6053332ac077d.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Uganda\",\"uganda\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"files\",\"homepage-english\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/if-covid-had-hit-uganda-in-its-golden-1990s-vaccine-age-2#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/if-covid-had-hit-uganda-in-its-golden-1990s-vaccine-age-2\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/if-covid-had-hit-uganda-in-its-golden-1990s-vaccine-age-2\",\"name\":\"If Covid had hit Uganda in its golden 1990s vaccine age\u2026 - 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