President Kaguta Museveni has warned district leaders who fail to mobilize masses to go for Covid-19 Vaccination.
“I now direct with immediate effect that all RDCs, CAOs and DHOs must carry out intensive mobilization for all eligible priority groups to go for vaccination.” Museveni said in a televised address on the Covid-19 situation in the country on Wednesday night.
“They should, in addition, ensure that no vaccines are wasted or left to expire,” In any district where vaccines expire, the RDC, CAO and DHO will be dismissed,” he warned.
The development comes days after the ministry of health warned that thousands of doses were likely to expire by September 30.
The ministry said about 67,000 vaccines are to expire at the end of September, the vaccines are part of the batch of 128,560 doses that were donated by Norway, of these 12,000 are in Kampala and 8000 are in Arua.
The latest ministry of health report indicates that so far, only 1,777, 685 doses of the vaccine have been administered in the whole country with 3,135 virus deaths recorded since March 2020.
Uganda has so far recorded 122,502 positive cases since March last year with 340 active cases currently on admission at different health centers across the country.
As of now, we have 2,294,000 doses of vaccines available at the National Medical Stores (NMS) out of 11,978,840 million doses expected by the end of December 2021.
In his address, Museveni said the government is Scaling up vaccination for all eligible Ugandans aged 18 years and above approximately 22 million.
“prioritizing the vaccination of the 4.8 million priority population: health workers, teachers, security personnel, elderly persons of 50 years and above, those below 50 years with comorbidities and 330,000 students in post-secondary institutions aged 18 years and above.” he said.
To-date, out of the targeted 550,000 teachers, 269,945 have already received the 1st dose of vaccination while 96,653 have received the second dose.
This leaves a total of 280,055 not yet vaccinated at all.