Africa must integrate routine vaccination programmes with Covid-19 jabs - WHO

BRAZZAVILLE - African countries are being urged to move toward integrating routine immunisation programmes with Covid-19 ones to cover lost ground.

This is because at least eight African countries this year postponed routine vaccination programmes as the Covid-19 pandemic became the immediate health focus, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says.

As such, “this (shift) left many children vulnerable to highly infectious childhood diseases.”

Covid-19 became a global pandemic on March 11, 2020 and the world had to grapple with uncertainty. At least 7.7 million children across the globe missed critical vaccines, most of them in Sub-Saharan Africa. “In 2020, 7.7 million infants missed one or more doses of diphtheria, tetanus toxoid, and pertussis (whooping cough) containing vaccines. Also, 4.9 million infants missed their first dose of the measles vaccine,” said WHO Africa region in a statement.

While the focus has been mainly on Covid-19 since vaccines were rolled out in 2021, only 8.7 percent of the African population is fully vaccinated, a far cry from the global average of 58 percent.

However, Covid-19 has seen the biggest vaccine rollout in the continent’s history. The shift from other important vaccination initiatives resulted in Malawi, in February this year, recording a case of wild polio which was last detected in the country in 1992.

The wake-up call got

Malawi back on track in paying attention to maintaining the eradication of polio.

Late last year, there was a yellow fever outbreak in Ghana, but officials moved swiftly to vaccinate for yellow fever and Covid-19 at the same time. From that lesson, Nigeria is integrating routine childhood vaccinations with Covid-19 ones at its fixed and mobile vaccination sites, and WHO has asked all countries to follow that example because of its cost-effectiveness. – NEWS24.