15m doses of Covid vaccines have not yet been deployed
By Tony Abet
The statistics from the National Medical Stores (NMS) indicate that up to 15 million out of the 28 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines received by the government have not yet been deployed.
This comes amid the race by the government to inoculate at least 22 million people to effectively contain the pandemic as the country moves to fully reopen the economy.
Only about 6.5 million people have been vaccinated with the first dose and 1.7 million are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 since the vaccination drive was launched in March.
Paul Okware, the Chief Stores and Operations Officer at NMS told this newspaper they have all types of vaccines in their stores but accountability is required before releasing more doses to districts.
Our field visits and reports from residents indicate that Kampala and Wakiso had either run out of some types of vaccines needed by people or the vaccination centers had totally closed because of lack of vaccines. We couldn’t determine how big the problem was on a national scale.
But Ms Sheila Nduhukire, the NMS spokesperson said yesterday for districts that don’t have vaccines, “we are dispatching the trucks to other districts and will have been delivered to the rest of the districts by the end of this week.”
She said the Ministry of Health has been implementing regional campaigns and “NMS delivered vaccines to the regional campaigns in Teso and Lango, Kigezi and Acholi and now Toro-Bunyoro and West Nile.”
Dr Mathias Lugolobi, the district health officer of Wakiso told this newspaper yesterday they don’t have any issues with accountability.
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