Africa has to take golden chance

Vaccinating African populations against COVID-19 has proved a difficult feat. Whereas the continent once grappled with vaccine shortages, it is now facing a shortage of attention.

While current COVID-19 vaccines have done less to reduce transmission than one would have hoped, they significantly reduce the severity of the illness, resulting in lower hospitalization rates. This is particularly important in Africa, where those who are hospitalized with COVID-19 are significantly more likely to die than those hospitalized with the disease elsewhere. Yet only three African countries have reached the World Health Organization’s vaccination target of 70 percent of the population, with the average across the continent standing at just 24 percent.

But mass vaccination is bigger than COVID-19. The pandemic brought a significant increase in government and multilateral investment in public health. If leveraged appropriately, these investments could substantially boost Africa’s capacity not only to end the COVID-19 crisis, but also to respond to future health emergencies, endemic diseases and pandemics. But this so-called pandemic dividend can be realized only if the continent remains committed to vaccination. If governments begin to roll back or redirect funding, the returns on pandemic investments could prove temporary.

One such return has been the rapid establishment and strengthening of systems for procuring, storing and delivering vaccines. Africa has developed regional pooled procurement mechanisms for vaccines and other medical products, expanded and strengthened its cold-chain systems and streamlined logistics.

But the COVID-19 pandemic may support future vaccination in an even more fundamental way. The crisis highlighted the need to foster vaccine demand in a way that is evidence-based, people-centered, guided by a tailored strategy and integrated into a country’s long-term immunization plans. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Saving Lives and Livelihoods initiative, together with many African governments, have been investing in the development of such systems.

Finally, mass COVID-19 vaccination campaigns have required the training of huge numbers of vaccinators, data analysts and logistics and storage experts.

This expanded capacity will go a long way toward strengthening responses to future health emergencies and closing gaps in routine health services.

It already is. In Botswana, the US Agency for International Development strengthened the pandemic response by taking advantage of community health platforms that were created to help deal with HIV/AIDS. Similarly, in Nigeria, a contact-tracing workforce established for polio was used to help manage the Ebola outbreak.

Ebere Okereke, Senior Technical Adviser at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, is an honorary senior public health adviser at the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an associate fellow at Chatham House.

Adam Bradshaw is Senior COVID-19 Policy Adviser at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. ©Project Syndicate