NAMATALE, Uganda — Dr. Eva Kabwongera’s job
is to make sure life-saving Covid-19 vaccines reach
Uganda’s 45 million people. On a recent morning, that
journey took her to a tiny island that is home to less than
2,000 people.
The 40 doses Kabwongera brought with her to Namatale had traveled more than 3,000 miles via plane, truck,
ferry and boat from Pune, India, to get to the outcrop in
Africa’s vast Lake Victoria.
“We are delivering hope,” said Kabwongera, who is
UNICEF’s immunization chief for Uganda, as she stepped into shallow water and walked to shore soaking
wet. Dozens of small, smiling children greeted her.
“The people there are waiting for it,” she added.
Dr. Eva Kabwongera says the country is struggling to finance deliveries to remote locations, such as Namatale.
But hope does not defeat a pandemic — vaccines do.
And Uganda doesn’t have enough to vaccinate even a
tiny portion of its population. With the severe international shortage, Uganda and countries like it look set to
have to wait to inoculate even its front-line health workers
and most vulnerable groups to help stop Covid-19 and
prevent the development of dangerous vaccine-resistant
variants.
The result has been an extreme gap in vaccine distribution, with almost 1 in 4 people receiving a vaccine in
high-income countries and a staggering 1 in more than
500 in low-income ones, according to the World Health
Organization. Uganda, for example, has so far received
only 864,000 vaccine doses — enough to fully vaccinate
400,000 people with two doses, or less than 1 percent of
the country’s 45 million population.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
In https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/uganda-covid-vaccine-
struggle/index.html
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