Floods impede COVID 19 vaccination

By Winnie Cirino

Health officials overseeing COVID 19 vaccination efforts say flooding in parts of the country is making it difficult to transport vaccines and train vaccinators in some counties.

The government had planned to vaccinate at least 10 percent of the population by the end of the year, but so far only 0.44 percent of the population has gotten shots, according to data from South Sudan’s Public Health Emergency Operations Center.

Doctor Angelo Guop Kuoch, the head of the Public Health Emergency Operations Center, acknowledges that some vaccination centers in flooded counties have stopped operating. 

“So, those facilities which were washed away by flood, surely have no existence, so there’s no any vaccine activities in areas having floods.” Kuoch said.

The health officials have been able to reaches areas less affected by the floods.  Kuoch says vaccination teams have tried their best to reach some families traveling by boat, but he adds not all areas are accessible.

He worries the ministry’s plan to reach 10 percent of the population by the end of the year will not be met any time soon. 

“It has affected our plan and vision for getting everybody vaccinated, but all these factors have contributed. The government had done its best with the partners, we didn’t have locations that have missed vaccines because of active delivery but because of natural disasters.” Kuoch said.   

According to the World Health Organization in South Sudan about 61,000 people have been fully vaccinated so far. Nearly 52,000 people are waiting for their second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine. 

Out of 150, 000 doses of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine received, 79 percent have been delivered to counties, according to Sacha Bootsma, the incident manager for COVID-19 at the World Health Organization in South Sudan.

Bootsma says the plan was to deliver vaccine doses to all 80 counties in South Sudan but the health ministry and the WHO are facing challenges in accessing flood affected counties in Jonglei state. 

 “Only 28 counties are currently starting the vaccinations, the reason is that some of the doses of the vaccines have not yet been delivered because of flooding in other areas.”

She says it could also be because of insecurity or other reasons but more importantly it’s been because of lack of training.

“The training has been slightly delayed in some of the areas and of course, our focus is on quality, we want to make sure that the health care workers that are administering the vaccines are fully aware of what they are doing, as some of them were used to AstraZeneca now they have to be retrained to know how to handle the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.” Bootsma says, emphasizing it is important to also train the people who are handling what’s known as the cold chain – the required system of refrigeration for the vaccines – as well as the supervisors and data entry workers.  

What’s important now is to convince donor nations that South Sudan is in position to finish the vaccines, to encourage more donations, according to Bootsma.

She says WHO has set the vaccination target to 40 percent by the end of December.

“We of course know that we are not going to meet that but our biggest priority now is to show that we are capable of absorbing a larger quantity of the vaccine in a shorter period of time. We are going to do some pilot vaccination strategy in more densely populated areas because it is much easier to vaccinate a larger number of people in a shorter time.” Bootsma said.