By Adama Makasuba
The Ministry of Health through support from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has vaccinated more than 1,500 people against coronavirus at The Gambia-Senegal border.
The institutions also rolled out an awareness raising campaign with complementary inoculation against COVID-19 and targeting mobile populations along The Gambia’s 749-kilometre border with Senegal.
The campaign, supported through the EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration, funded by the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa has so far reached 60 border communities in the North Bank and Upper River regions, hitting a milestone of 1,500 vaccinated people since December 2021. The campaign involves working with health educators and community leaders in each region, to ensure that information provided is well understood.
With a historically porous border between the two countries, mobile populations tend to be more vulnerable to the spread of the disease but are also often hardest to reach with health information and services, due to their remoteness and distance from regional health facilities. The campaign is designed to complement other ongoing vaccination efforts, in a country where only 20 per cent of the eligible population has been fully vaccinated, as per data from the Ministry of Health.
“COVID-19 is still with us. We all need to get vaccinated to break the cycle of transmission,” stressed H.E. Dr Ahmadou Lamin Samateh, The Gambia’s Minister of Health. “The vaccines are safe and effective and are available. I encourage people to get vaccinated so that we can live our lives as we used to.”
“The spread of the Omicron variant has seen the number of COVID-19 positive cases in The Gambia once again surged at the beginning of 2022. Over 1,500 cases were registered in January, an almost 400 per cent increase from December 2021 as per data from the Ministry of Health,” he added.
“With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU launched new initiatives and adapted its programmes to better respond to The Gambia’s needs. This support to the Ministry of Health, with a focus on border areas, is crucial for improving the vaccination coverage rate,” said H.E. Corrado Pampaloni, the European Union Ambassador to The Gambia. “More broadly, Team Europe is a major contributor to the COVAX initiative for vaccine access and is supporting the construction of a vaccine manufacturing plant in Dakar, which will significantly increase Africa’s vaccine production capacity.”
From March to May, the Ministry will be implementing three more phases of the campaign in the Central River, Lower River and West Coast Regions.
“IOM has always advocated that we view the pandemic from the lens of mobility,” explained Fumiko Nagano, IOM’s Chief of Mission in The Gambia. “This is why our outreach efforts continue to target populations that are mobile across borders, in locations where health care is not as secure. We are optimistic that the awareness campaign will reach more communities and encourage more people to take the vaccine.”
Since the start of the pandemic, IOM has been a key partner for the Ministry’s Risk Communication and Community Engagement efforts. Over the past two years, IOM supported the Ministry to engage over 25,400 persons in border communities, with funding from the European Union, Japan, Switzerland, and the United Nations Peace building Fund.
