Dar best performing in Covid-19 coverage–WHO
TANZANIA has emerged the best performing among 34 African countries on increasing Covid-19 vaccination coverage.
The development recorded for the concerted support by the Covid-19 Vaccine Delivery Partnership comes as the Covid-19 vaccine delivery enters a phase of integration with routine services.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday that the country has recorded an exponential increase to 49 per cent by the end of January 2023 from a poor coverage of 2.8 per cent of the total population by mid-January 2022.
The UN agency said because of the dramatic achievement, Tanzania has become the best performer among 34 countries that were below 10 per cent of target population by January 2022.
WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance launched the Covid-19 Vaccine Delivery Partnership (CoVDP) in January 2022 to advocate for the urgency in turning vaccine doses into vaccinated, protected communities that had low performance.
The statement said the CoVDP supported the countries to overcome bottlenecks to vaccination.
Continuous political buy-in, cross-sectoral collaboration and involvement of implementing partners to expand reach and services beyond immunisation teams and enable targeted approach towards priority groups are identified as enablers of Tanzania’s exponential increase during the period under review.
WHO Representative for Tanzania, Dr Zabulon Yoti stated that “the rapid increase in Covid-19 vaccination is a consequence of heightened political commitment at the national, regional and district levels.”
He said at a technical meeting, coordinated and facilitated by WHO in May 2022 in Dodoma capital, the government and partners leveraged on the national leadership’s positive stance to develop and endorse a rapid plan of action for accelerated vaccination campaign.
Dr Yoti affirmed that leveraging on the national leadership has renewed commitment as WHO facilitated partners mapping and provided technical guidelines on the adoption and implementation of region-specific mass vaccination campaigns according to comparative advantages of partners/NGOs to accelerate vaccination coverage that engendered healthy competition to increase coverage at the regions.
He said the Implementing partners including WHO, UNICEF, USAID, FHI, Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and others adopted specific regions for special technical and financial support to increase vaccine uptake.
Dr Yoti further explained other strategies that contributed to the sustained increase in Covid-19 vaccination saying: “In addition to the healthy competition introduced by the adoption of regions by partners, a socio-ecological approach to hesitancy enabled a positive environment for acceptance of Covid-19 vaccines.”
He added that, service delivery through house-to-house strategy made Covid-19 vaccines readily available at zero cost, acceptable and affordable to beneficiaries.”
As of the February 2023, a total of 32,093,549 people have been fully vaccinated in Tanzania which translates to about 45 per cent of the total population and 87 per cent of the target population above 18 years.
More than 38,900,000 vaccine doses have been received in the Mainland and Zanzibar through bilateral agreement and the COVAX facility and a total of more than 90 per cent doses have been distributed to regions.
Since the beginning of 2022, available data show a sustained reduction in the number of hospital admissions due to Covid-19. “A downward trend in Covid-19 related hospitalisation, can be plotted on the curve of increase in access to vaccination in Tanzania,” observed Dr Yoti.
In June 2022, Tanzania was one of 11 countries selected through the Global Vaccine Access (Global VAX) initiative, the US government’s partnership with Tanzania raised awareness about the importance of getting vaccinated.
The partnership also amplified investment in expanding Covid-19 vaccine delivery efforts including cold chain and supply logistics, vaccine confidence and demand, data and analytics, local vaccination plans among others.
The initiative boosted demand for the vaccines to more than 70%, where eligible population were fully vaccinated by December 2022.
“CDC focused on vaccinating people at highest risk for getting sick due to Covid-19, including people with HIV, staff in healthcare facilities, and community workers. Sometimes addressing the barrier to vaccination was as simple as having a sign that says ‘Covid-19 vaccines here.” CDC Tanzania Country Director, Mahesh Swaminathan explained.
The first case of Covid-19 in Tanzania was registered on March 16 in 2020. Since then, the outbreak subsequently evolved and affected, to varying magnitudes.
