Uganda Launches Covid-19 Vaccination exercise.

By; Sunday Gloria Abwoch

10^th March 2021

Uganda today has launched the Vaccination exercise against Covid-19 among those to take the lead is the permanent secretary in the health ministry Dr. Diana Atwine.

Shortly after receiving her first jab of Astra zenaca vaccine at Mulago Specialised Hospital Dr. Atwine has encouraged Ugandans to allow be vaccinated and the public should not associate themselves with the negative talk making rounds that the vaccine could be unsafe.

The Ministry of Health first received 864,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, shipped via the COVAX facility—the world’s facility for universal access to COVID-19 vaccines and additional 100,000 doses from India so far received on a bilateral agreement between Uganda and the republic of India. In February 2021 Parliament approved UGX 18 Billion to procure order by the Ugandan government.

Uganda targets to vaccinate 49.6 per cent of the population, which is about 21,936,011, in a phased manner. Each phase is planned to cover 20 per cent of the population – approximately 4.38 million people.

The initial group will be health workers in public health facilities followed by those in private facilities. This will be done from March 10 to 15. Thereafter, teachers will follow and the exercise will begin from March 16 to 19, according to the ministry of health officials.

The ministry estimates that at least 150,000 health workers and 550,000 teachers will have to be vaccinated in the said period.

Dr. Monica Musenero, the Presidential Advisor on epidemics says vaccination comes with some effects such as a fever, heaviness of the hand and pain. She says these are a good sign that the vaccine is actually working.

She encourages those that will experience pain to use simple pain killers such as Panadol. AstraZeneca vaccine, which the government is going to use, has generated concern in a number of countries including South Africa where vaccination was halted when it was noticed that the drug wasn’t effective. On Sunday March 7, 2021, the Austrian government halted the use of AstraZeneca vaccine after one person died and another got sick after vaccination.