Covid-19: "When we wanted the vaccines, we didn't get them, now we don't want them anymore! »

While the WHO warns of a 42% drop in vaccination rates in Africa, only 17% of African populations are fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

It's an outcry from all sides. The observation of NGOs and African states is simple: people no longer want to be vaccinated against Covid-19. So much so that, for example, the South African pharmaceutical group Aspen risk of abandoning his production project of Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccines, as demand is not keeping pace with production.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), despite a 23% increase in vaccination rates in Africa during the month of February, the months of March and April witnessed drops reaching 35% and 42% respectively. %. Despite this decline, at the level of vaccine acquisition, some countries refuse to obtain doses, preferring to try to sell off the stocks already received.

"Asking Africans to prioritize vaccination against Covid-19 is a difficult request," said Rahab Mwaniki, Africa coordinator for People's Vaccine (PVA). “People say the West has never really supported them,” she continues.

According to the head of human development in East and Southern Africa for the World Bank (WB), Amit Dar, of the 3,6 billion dollars earmarked for the purchase of vaccines in Africa, barely 520 million have been spent.

Africa has the lowest COVID mortality rate of any continent. It also has the lower rate of so-called boosters. 98.4% of its population has not received a “booster.” This shows how much can be accomplished sometimes by not doing something.

— CommonSense MD (@CommonSenseMD1) May 11, 2022

Lack of awareness

The head of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign in Ghana, Christina Odei, believes that, "at the beginning, everyone really wanted them (vaccines, editor's note), but we didn't get them". "If we had received vaccines earlier, this kind of thing would not happen," she complains.

Indeed, the boycott of African populations for vaccination against Covid-19 is palpable. A Reuters report shows that in Ghana or Senegal, vaccination teams deployed on the ground struggle to convince people to get a dose. “We go around bustling markets and shops with slung cooler boxes full of Covid-19 vaccines. But after hours, we only administer four doses,” says a healthcare worker.

Read: Covid-19, Omicron: what if the culprits were not African countries?

However, several African countries, such as Gambia, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Kenya invest a lot of funds in mobile vaccination campaigns. The only solution according to officials to raise awareness and facilitate procedures.

The director of health services with the Gambian Ministry of Health, Mustapha Bittaye, assures that The Gambia recently refused to receive 200 doses of vaccines from the African Union. "The authorities are still distributing an old batch, we don't need more vaccines," he says.

There is a global price crisis. No other words can describe what we are experiencing. Its broad impact may be more devastating than any crisis witnessed over the last decade, including Covid-19, as the poor gets poorer. From America, Europe, through Asia to Africa, same story. pic.twitter.com/QM6ttakLeB

— Gabby Otchere-Darko (@GabbyDarko) May 18, 2022