The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has embarked on a mass COVID-19 vaccination drive in Namibia amid indications that just over a quarter of the country’s adult population has been fully vaccinated.
Africa CDC regional coordinator for southern Africa Lul Pout Riek said on Friday that it had partnered with the Mastercard Foundation to implement an in-country implementation of its Saving Lives and Livelihoods initiative in Namibia to accelerate the COVID-19 vaccination.
Riek said the Saving Lives and Livelihoods initiative would assist the Namibian government as it launches the national integrated mass vaccine campaign.
“We recognize that the only way to end the pandemic and safeguard lives and livelihoods on the continent is to immunize a critical mass of the African population rapidly,” Riek said.
The mass vaccination campaign aims to ensure that COVID-19 vaccination efforts are integrated with existing childhood vaccinations leading to the protection of the communities from the impacts of COVID-19 and childhood vaccine-preventable diseases.
Under the initiative, Africa CDC and Namibia’s Ministry of Health plan to establish 27 new vaccination centres across the country while strengthening 70 COVID-19 vaccination centres.
The target is to vaccinate more than 500,000 adults over the next 12 months in the selected sites.
Ministry of Health data shows that there has a low uptake of COVID-19 vaccines in the country, with only 26 percent of the target population of 1,779,271 so far vaccinated.
The Africa CDC Saving Lives and Livelihoods initiative is a US$1.5 billion partnership with the Mastercard Foundation that was launched in June 2021 to purchase COVID-19 vaccines for at least 65 million people across the continent.
A total of US$2 million of the fund has been set aside for the first year of implementation in Namibia.
JN/APA