AFRICA – European Union-funded, WHO-led two-year project has risen the number of COVID-19 vaccination in many vulnerable African communities.
At the start of 2022, the COVID-19 vaccination rate was less than 5% on average in the 16 participating countries. That rate is now closing in on 30% – the continent’s average – among the 14 countries whose data was available in January.
The countries participating in the €16 million (US$16.90m) grant project are Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Tanzania.
To achieve those rising numbers, national health workers trained by WHO experts have been administering vaccines in urban hubs, remote villages, refugee and displacement camps, workplaces, public spaces and elsewhere.
Some of the target countries now have an even higher rate of fully vaccinated people than Africa’s average. These are the Central African Republic, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Mozambique, Somalia and Tanzania.
In Liberia, where about 80% of the population has been fully vaccinated, health authorities and WHO staff worked with community mobilizers on outreach tactics such as home visits and vaccination campaigns in outdoor markets.
In Somalia, 42% of people were fully vaccinated by the end of 2022. Among these were some of the hardest-to-reach communities, such as nomads, refugees and people living in camps after fleeing drought and conflict.
Project teams have so far fully vaccinated almost half of Somalia’s internally displaced people.
From its start, the project has prioritized the most vulnerable, such as health workers, older people, and those living through humanitarian crises.
In nine of the project countries, 56% of people of people living in refugee or displacement camps, along with their host communities, have been fully vaccinated, according to project data.
Most countries saw the biggest jump in their coverage rates after vaccination campaigns that were held from September to December of 2022. In Cameroon, for example, the number of vaccinated people doubled after a mass-vaccination campaign in November.
Mozambique has been one of the project’s success stories; nearly two-thirds of the country’s population has been fully vaccinated. Among that group is Julieta Jose, a resident of the Malika camp for internally displaced people.
The number of health workers trained to administer COVID-19 vaccines rose from about 130 000 less than a year ago to almost 1.6 million at the end of January; about 1000 of these were deployed in South Sudan in late 2022, helping raise the coverage rate from one of the world’s lowest to about 20%.
The workers had to learn the cold-chain requirements of the vaccines, service-delivery procedures and more.
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