Zim cannot afford vaccine hesitancy

GOVERNMENT finally buckled under the weight of rising new infections of COVID-19 and imposed a hard lockdown that came into force as of yesterday. It was inevitable that this would happen after neighbouring South Africa took a similar step in an effort to contain the spread of the virus. The experiment with localised lockdowns clearly did not work and the country is under the cosh as the third wave takes hold around the country, driven by the South African and the Delta variants.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed Zimbabwe’s poorly-resourced healthcare system and exposing the glaring gaps in staffing, poor infrastructure, management systems, poor morale among the overworked personnel and weak control mechanisms among the many.

Poor staffing is an age-old problem, not only in Zimbabwe, but across Africa as the West and other developed nations have poached critical skills by offering better remuneration and retirement packages or as personnel simply opted for functional economies.

The third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating all the deficiencies in our health value chain. At the weekend, we reported that Zimbabwe’s main referral health centre, Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, has ordered doctors to reduce normal admissions and discharge patients deemed as stable to create space for COVID-19 patients, following a surge in infections.

The country has an estimated infrastructural gap of over 7 000 hospital beds in Zimbabwe. With limited resources, this gap will not be easy to bridge but this can be blamed on the government’s slow response to the crisis or lack understanding of how long and how much damage the virus could be and quickly mitigating the potential dangers.

As at 28 June 2021, Zimbabwe had 47 284 confirmed cases, including 37 949 recoveries and 1 749 deaths.

The rise in new infections in mostly rural communities show that those areas once considered safe are at great risk, and it is unlikely that local health services will be able to cope.

Zimbabwe, like now has a severe shortage of vaccines and is unlikely to meet its target of inoculating 60% of its population without acquiring more jabs. The country is expecting about 2,5 million vaccines from China this week.

Clearly the country needs a new strategy in its fight against the virus, one that recognises our shortcomings and specifically target to address them and strengthen the primary health system. Funding, remuneration and creating a healthy working environment for the frontline workers has to be at the heart of such a policy.

Government also needs to work on creating more awareness among the population to the dangers posed by the virus in the short to long term.

The lockdown alone will not work, but marrying that with rigorous enforcement, an aggressive vaccination campaign and making sure the vulnerable get some form of relief so they do not have to venture out in search of cash, and get exposed to the virus might just do the trick.

Zimbabwe just cannot afford vaccine hesitation.