By Binta Jaiteh
Sainey Sanneh director of research at ministry of health is leading a team of researchers on population-based covid-19 prevention study in the Gambia.
According to him, since when the first case of Covid-19 was discovered in December 2019 to date, they have not still understand the virus to address knowledge gap and provide appropriate scientific guidance for the current and future epidemic prevention and control in Africa.
Africa Centers for disease control is providing support to assist African Union member states in conducting standardized serological prevalence surveys of Covid 19.
He said that Covid-19 data are critical for planning effective mitigation strategies and understanding the true impact of the disease and relevant intervention measures in Africa.
Mr Sanneh disclosed that the information gained from these surveys will provide critical insight into the transmission and impact of the virus in Africa and help countries to understand what factors may have influenced recent transmission.
Noting that standardization of methodologies will facilitate a better understanding of the different in behaviour of the virus in different geographical areas, in different climate zones and in different mitigation contexts.
“The aims and objectives of this virus are to provide estimates on exposure (Sero-prevalence) of COVID 19 in the Gambian population. Age and sex-specific cumulative incident of COVID-19 in the general population up to the point at which the survey is carried out will also be calculated,” he stated.
However, “the specific objective is to estimate the exposure Sero-prevalence of SARS-CoV2 in the Gambia, determine the proportions of positive individuals that are SARS-CoV-2 asymptomatic and negative individuals that are reported having pre-existing medical conditions,” he said.
Mamanding Kinteh, from MOH said, their implementation strategy of Covid-19 strategies is different, as they are using both fix and mobile strategies.
‘’For fix stage vaccinators are move from one centre to another major or minor, indirectly within the border lines,’’ she said
She said some of the communications strategies they used are radio programs, synchronizing, TV shows and social Medias in disseminating information so that people will go for vaccination.
She added that, Johnson and Johnson donated by the European government through the COVAX to the Gambia, they have vaccinated 139, 337 individuals and Sino- pharm that has been received from Senegal they vaccinated 5,682 and for the AstraZeneca is 48,483.
She explained further that, more women vaccinated than men in any region and also more vaccination are done in outreach side so meaning is very impactful in moving towards the population than population moving to health facilities to be vaccinated.
However, it could either be women are more receptive to health intervention or they are population dictates but we still need to communicate so that men can also be vaccinated. CRR 10% vaccinated of its population and while targeting a population of 18 and above, nationally is 1.3 million. LRR 17.8 % of its target population, north bank vaccinated east region 11% of its population, north bank west region 16.0%, URR vaccinated 10.9 % western 1 being the driver due to population vaccinated 9.5% and western 7.2%.
