Ugandan Minister Blames West for Covid Vaccine Shortage | Uganda

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A Ugandan government minister blamed the West for his country’s inability to get more Covid-19 vaccines, as the World Health Organization warned Africa urgently needs hundreds of million more bites to fend off a third wave of infections.

Chris Baryomunsi said Uganda was able to immunize more than a million people but was unable to obtain other vaccines.

The problem has been on the supply side, said Baryomunsi, who is also an epidemiologist. We have the money, but we just can’t get the vaccine. It is a challenge of access and equity. We have to rely on the western world and the western world has focused on its people. The impression is that the people there don’t care about the Africans.

Uganda, which has successfully quelled previous waves of infection, has, like other countries in Africa, risked significant economic damage by imposing another severe lockdown.

There was a complacency that set in with the population, and then a much more aggressive new variant, Baryomunsi told The Guardian. We have lost a lot of people. The good news is that we have started to reduce infections.

Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO director for Africa, told reporters that the continent had just marked its worst pandemic week in its history. But the worst is yet to come as the fast third wave continues to gain speed and new ground, she said.

In the seven days leading up to Thursday, the continent recorded 251,000 cases, an increase of 21%. So far, only 1.6% of vaccine doses administered worldwide have been administered in Africa, and less than 2% of its population has been vaccinated.

This leaves hundreds of millions of people still vulnerable to infections and serious illnesses, Moeti said. The end of this meteoric rise is still in a few weeks. We can always break the chain of transmission by testing, isolating contacts and cases, and following key public health measures.

Sixteen African countries are witnessing a resurgence of the virus, the most contagious Delta variant, detected in 10 of them. A total of 151,000 people have died across the continent. With limited tests and mortality statistics, both totals are considered very large underestimates.

South Africa is the hardest-hit country in Africa, with new infections daily reaching record highs, fueled by the Delta variant and late responses from policymakers. South Africa’s excess mortality figures suggest that more than 170,000 people have died from the disease, although official statistics put 65,000.

Although infections in the country’s economic heartland, Gauteng Province, appear to have peaked, the rest of South Africa is now hard hit, prompting further criticism from local authorities and the African National Congress in Africa. power. Cyril Ramaphosa, the president, is expected to announce the extension of restrictions imposed two weeks ago when he addresses the nation on Sunday evening.

In Sudan, nearly 200 doctors and other frontline health workers have died from Covid, and most are still waiting for vaccines, local medical staff said.

There is some hope for faster vaccine deliveries to Africa. The WHO has said the Covax program, the UN-backed program set up to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines, hopes to distribute more than 20 million doses that are expected to arrive from the United States soon.

Covax partners are working tirelessly to secure dose-sharing commitments and supply agreements with manufacturers to ensure that the most vulnerable Africans are promptly vaccinated against Covid-19.

These efforts are paying off. Our calls for us first and not me first finally turn words into action. But deliveries cannot arrive soon enough as the third wave is looming across the continent, Moeti said.

Nineteen countries in Africa have used more than 80% of their doses provided by Covax, while 31 countries have used more than half.

Even if relatively wealthy countries like South Africa do not prepare for predictable outbreaks of the virus, there are fears that other governments across the continent are still strengthening failing health systems weakened by decades of underperformance. financing, inefficiency and corruption.

In Tanzania, the government has taken action to address problems caused by the policies of late President John Magafuli, who has denied the threat of Covid and failed to impose significant measures to limit the spread of the disease. Since his death in March, authorities in the East African country have taken steps to publicly acknowledge the threat of the virus.

A doctor working at a large private hospital in Arusha, the capital, said the situation there remained very serious.

People are dying every day. There is not enough oxygen. We have to push them away and they die at home. I think it will get worse before it gets better and that despairs me, said the doctor, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Boniface Kenn, a travel agent in Dar es Salaam, said the situation had deteriorated in recent weeks and was now really, really bad.

Tanzania is one of the countries on the continent that has suffered the most from travel restrictions, which have wrecked tourism industries across the continent.

It was very hard. I struggled to pay my rent, took my children out of school, sometimes I couldn’t feed my family. It will take a long time to recover, Kenn said.

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