By: Nyima Sillah
Buba Darboe, Programme Manager at the Ministry of Health, has revealed that more than 300,000 people have been vaccinated against the Covid-19 with J&J, AstraZeneca and COVAX vaccines.
Speaking to The Voice exclusively, he said: “lot of people are now demanding for the vaccines unlike before when they have to appeal to people to come out and protect their family members and communities. The awareness level is getting higher people are getting more educated about the importance of covid-19 vaccines.”
“The demand is still low looking at our target which is 1.3million people, but only 300,000 people are vaccinated so far. I think we are still on the low side. So we are still calling on the general public to come out, let them do away with all the misinformation. We are assuring the Gambian people that covid 19 vaccines are safe and they should come forward and get vaccinated, protect themselves and their family members,” he added.
According to him, the vaccines have a lot of positive impacts because hospitalization has drastically gone down which shows that the vaccine is working and it is effective.
He disclosed that the ministry is working hard to get the best vaccines available for the country as far as covid-19 is a concern. Adding that they are going by the WHO guidelines and they are working with partners to bring in more vaccines to the country.
“We are upgrading our supply chain system, our storage system, and our delivery system so things have improved a lot. In few weeks to come we will receive the consignment of Pfizer in the country so we know these are very important vaccines for the country,” he said.
Meanwhile, he said the expired vaccines will be destroyed by the ministry of health, adding they are “working with relevant stakeholders that have the technical know-how to dispose of the expired vaccines in a safe manner, this is the step that the ministry of health is taking with regards to those limited stock of covid 19 Johnson and Johnson that got expired.”
