With the emergence of new Covid-19 variants, RX Radio Presenter Fatboy has questioned the significance of the continued vaccination campaign targeting citizens mostly outside Kampala meant to protect against infection of the initial Covid-19 version (SARS- CoV- 2).
On February 5, 2022, The Ministry of Health launched a door-to-door vaccination campaign to be carried out in areas of greater Mpigi, Kampala, Masaka, Bukedea, Karamoja, Bugisu, Kapchorwa and Busoga in an effort to extend vaccination to all people, including the elderly and those with special needs.
“We are dealing with a new variant of Covid-19 and as far as I am aware, the vaccines being distributed were known to be effective against the alpha variant. The President himself has been saying that if you were vaccinated before, you need to get a booster. So if this were a booster campaign, it would make more sense than vaccinating those completely unvaccinated in which I wonder if it will even be effective for them,”
Olive Najjuma, The Fatboy Show Co-host commenting on how the vaccination campaign is focused on areas outside Kampala said, “It looks like the vaccination is targeting people that don't live in Kampala. So one wonders; is the Ministry doing this because they really care and want people to get vaccinated or because people in Kampala are seemingly stubborn so they are now taking it out of town so that it is not wasted?”
Olive further said, “I think that the Ministry of Health is trying to avoid having to destroy batches of vaccines because they expire and we've seen countries like South Sudan where they had to destroy millions of vaccines.”
Fatboy, in concurrence, said that the Ministry might be trying to avoid wastage of vaccines received through donation which could possibly discourage future grants from donors.
At the launch of the campaign, Dr. Diana Atwiine, the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Health advised residents to get vaccinated to avoid the country getting into another lockdown. The Ministry revealed that 13 million doses will be used to carry out the exercise.
On February 3 2022, the Government also proposed The Public Health (Amendment) Bill 2021 to illegalize refusal of compliance of vaccination whereby Ugandans will be charged a fine of shs.4 million or face imprisonment, or even both.
The Fatboy show is hosted by James Onen aka Fatboy, Olive, Sarah and Lesham every weekday from 6am to 10am on RX Radio.
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