Vaccination of vaccines causes doses to drop in some African countries

With the growing transmission of communities and the high average mortality rates due to the coronavirus in Malawi, there was great concern among the advocates in the country’s healthcare this week when the authorities announced that they would discard 16,000 expired doses of vaccine.

They were part of a total of 512,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines that the country fed through southeastern Africa received from India, the African Union and Covax, the global initiative to obtain and distribute vaccines. Health officials did not specify why the vaccines expired, but said the doses were void Tuesday “due to different expiration dates of the vaccines received.”

Health experts and campaigners have warned that the hesitation of vaccines, coupled with rumors that obsolete stinging membranes are being administered, may have contributed to the slow distribution of the doses and their eventual expiration.

In many African countries, vaccination campaigns are hampered by factors such as scientific skepticism, limited or no efforts to educate the public, inefficient distribution systems and concerns about the extremely rare but serious cases of blood clots being investigated among a small number of people who have received . the vaccines AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. These two vaccines, which require less severe cooling, are crucial for efforts to immunize populations in poorer countries.

When the first vaccine doses arrived in Kenya in early March, there was great reluctance to receive them, even among doctors, according to dr. Chibanzi Mwachonda, the secretary general of the Kenyan union for medical workers. The government has resorted to administering the doses to non-essential workers to waste it. The Democratic Republic of Congo, which also received its first doses last month, has delayed its vaccination campaign until April 19, a date it set after it reported that a task force had determined the doses of AstraZeneca vaccine in the country no risk to the population.

The concern over the vaccines also comes as the African Union has halted plans to secure the AstraZeneca vaccine – a decision taken by an official to prevent duplication of Covax’s efforts, which AstraZeneca continues to provide to African countries. will deliver. Although the decision is not related to concerns about blood clotting, experts said it could still increase misinformation about the vaccine. And the African Union is shifting its focus to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which could exacerbate the problem. Its use has been suspended in the United States.

In African countries, public confusion over whether it should be vaccinated, and if so, when and where to do so, has contributed to the expiration of doses. As in Malawi, South Sudan expired 59,000 unused doses this month.

The problem is not unique to African countries. Tens of thousands of jabs were also thrown away in countries such as France and the United States. But African countries are facing much more serious supply shortages. According to a New York Times database, Africa has the lowest vaccination rate of any continent, with many countries not yet starting mass vaccinations.

Countries like Ghana, which was the first African nation to receive doses of Covax, are about to take up its initial supply, not knowing when the next group may arrive.

“This inequality has a negative effect on the whole world,” said Dr. Ngozi Erondu, an infectious disease specialist and a senior health scientist at the O’Neill Institute at Georgetown University, said. If ‘entire regions and countries remain inadequately vaccinated’, she will continue to devastate populations with persistent diseases and always leave the larger global health community vulnerable to the virus. ‘