According to the American newspaper, “The New York Times”, vaccination campaigns against the emerging corona virus are facing several obstacles in Africa; Among them is the weak health care systems and their inability to vaccinate people, especially since vaccination requires logistical aspects such as cooling devices, in addition to human resources represented by nursing staff.
Some African countries were able to obtain shipments of the vaccine, either by purchasing it or by benefiting from the international “Ko-Vax” initiative to help developing countries, but they were able to vaccinate only a limited percentage of the population.
Health data indicate that only 7.8 percent of the African population has received a vaccination against the Corona virus, while the total population of the continent reaches 1.4 billion people.
Africa has received 404 million doses of vaccines against Corona so far, amid fears that poor vaccination on this continent will lead to the emergence of dangerous mutations that may confuse global efforts to contain the epidemic everywhere, including developed countries.
Vaccination campaigns collide with the obstacles of poor technology in the countries of the continent, in addition to the lack of accumulating long experience in vaccinating adults against the infection that appeared in China in late 2019, and then turned into a global epidemic.
These obstacles add to the skepticism of many about vaccines, in light of misinformation campaigns that question the feasibility of anti-Corona vaccines, which is something developed countries suffer in turn, which leads to people’s reluctance to vaccinate.
wholesale obstacles
Some conspiracy theorists promote allegations that the Corona epidemic is a scheme arranged by Europeans to exterminate Africans, and others claim that the Microsoft Corporation, Bill Gates, is leading a campaign to reduce the world’s population.
The American newspaper points to another factor, no less important, is the indifference to the vaccine, because what concerns people in the first place is the deterioration of the economic situation and not the emerging Corona virus, even if people hear about the serious complications of “Covid 19” disease.
“I would like to take the vaccine against the Corona virus, but I work from Monday until Saturday, and I don’t know if they work on Sunday,” says Bernardit Kwando, a resident of a popular neighborhood on the outskirts of the Zambian capital, Lusaka.
In the face of this stumbling in vaccination, Africa finds itself facing two prominent problems. The first is that the pace of vaccination is slow and does not help to avoid many deaths among those infected with the Corona virus.
The second problem is that the large number of corona infections, in light of poor vaccination, provides fertile soil for the emergence of mutants that confuse the world, and make the vaccines that have been developed so far the subject of questions and research, because successive mutations may affect the immunity granted by vaccination.
Experts warn that many doses that are donated to poor African countries are close to the expiration date, and this means that benefiting from them requires very quick action, and this speed is not always achieved in poor countries.
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