Exhaust stockpiles of Covid-19 vaccines
at the end of 2023 and that is the end of next year.”
Johannes Marisa, the Medical and Dental Private Health Practitioners of Zimbabwe Association president, said ordinarily vaccine manufacturers do not indicate expiry dates on their products, but it was common knowledge in the medical field that vaccines lose their potency a year after being produced.
Zimbabwe’s last vaccine deliveries were received in September 2021.
“(Not indicating expiry dates) is done for security reasons on the part of manufacturers, but we rightfully know that after 12 months, the vaccines lose their potency,” Marisa said.
“So you cannot keep a vaccine for more than 12 months. So ideally, we must try to limit the shelf life of vaccines.”
Mahomva said the government had come up with a new strategy to increase the uptake of Covid-19 vaccines to reach the WHO targets to vaccinate 70% of the population by mid-year.
She said Zimbabwe’s Covid-19 vaccination programme was one of the strongest programmes in Africa.
“The country has, however, had its fair share of vaccine uptake challenges,” Mahomva said.
“This is despite the fact that the country has plenty of vaccines in stock.
“Uptake challenges are mostly associated with low-risk perception, misinformation and access issues.
“The country, therefore, recently went through a re-planning process and put in place additional vaccination strategies to address identified challenges.”
She said innovative approaches, including outreach services and targeted vaccination messages for key community groups, will be used in order to address the challenges.
“The main aim of the campaign is to ramp up the vaccination coverage in order to reach 70% of the total population by end of July 2022 in line with the WHO’s new global target of 70% total population coverage by mid-2022,” she said.
“The campaign is in collaboration with all stakeholders including community and church leaders.”
She said additional vaccine doses had been procured and paid for and were awaiting delivery once the government gives a green light to the manufacturers.
Itai Rusike, director of the Community Working Group on Health, said instead of donating vaccines, Zimbabwe must be pushing for a higher uptake to effectively fight the pandemic.
“Instead of donating our vaccines to other countries, Zimbabwe needs to come up with innovative communication strategies in order to increase vaccine uptake and accelerate towards achieving the required herd immunity of vaccinating at least 70% of the population of about 13 million Zimbabweans,” he said.
“Public trust will now have to be rebuilt in the vaccine programme itself and this requires an urgent, widespread communication strategy.
“We need to identify the Covid 19 vaccine champions and ambassadors from the traditional, religious and cultural leaders to encourage their communities, congregants and members to embrace the vaccine.”
John Maketo, a Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development programmes manager, bemoaned what he said was lack of transparency in the procurement and use of stocks of Covid-19 vaccines.
“More should have been done to disclose for example how much the vaccines were being paid for and reasons for procuring them from certain nations instead of the others,” Maketo said.
“It’s a critical issue that undermines transparency in the procurement of the vaccines.
“So in broad terms we feel that transparency levels were not upheld in the procurement of the vaccines.”
Mahomva said procurement and sourcing of Covid-19 vaccines in Zimbabwe was guided by the Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe (MCAZ), which is the regulatory body.
“Only MCAZ approved and registered vaccines (procured or donated) are received for use in Zimbabwe,” she said.
“This is the same process that is followed for all other vaccines and medicines in line with the country’s laws.”
Mahomva said the ministries of Health and Child Care and Finance and Development were in charge of procurement of vaccines and they had ensured that purchase and donation conditions were favourable to Zimbabwe “in line with the procurement laws and value for money principles.”
Zimbabwe’s health delivery system is heavily underfunded and lacks basic supplies such as drugs and syringes.
The country has also been witnessing a mass exodus of health workers due to the deteriorating economy.
Frequent power cuts also mean that fridges holding vaccines at remote health centres need to be kept on expensive fuel generators and this hampers rollouts, experts say.