Just 3% of South Sudan could be vaccinated by next month, Irish UNICEF volunteer reveals

JUST three per cent of South Sudan could be vaccinated against Covid by next month, an Irish volunteer there has revealed.

While Ireland expects to have most adults jabbed in the coming months, the picture isn’t nearly as straightforward in the Third World.

Charity UNICEF has warned no one is safe from Covid^[1] until we’re all inoculated.

It has launched a Get A Vaccine, Give A Vaccine ­campaign, asking Irish people lucky enough to get a free jab from the Government to help crucial shots reach struggling men, women and children in the world’s poorer nations.

The UN and the European Commission launched Covax to bring vaccines to the world’s poorest nations with  South Sudan receiving their first deliveries in May.

The jabs initiative —  run by the World Health Organisation, and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance —   aims to ensure the equitable access to  vaccines, targeting 92 low and middle-income nations.

They asked UNICEF to come on board because of its expertise in procuring half the world’s vaccines for kids under five every year. The target is distributing  two billion ­vaccines by the end of 2021.

SOARING CASES

Chief of water Dara Johnson is working with the charity in landlocked South Sudan, which is surrounded by other African nations with soaring cases.

He  said: “We’ve a population of 11million so we got 132,000 doses in May and that’s targeting about three per cent of the ­population. The whole idea is to get things up and running because you don’t want to get vaccines that expire, you want to get a system in place.

“So last week we transported everything out to the ten states around the country and the whole process has now started.

“The worry for a landlocked country such as South Sudan is how the nations nearby are dealing with the pandemic.

“All the countries around are on the red list and Uganda especially is seeing a big surge in Covid cases. I don’t know if the numbers are coming out but we’re certainly hearing about a lot of deaths here.

“We’re not seeing it here right now but the monitoring systems are very weak so you can’t be fully reliant on that.”

'GET INFORMATION OUT THERE'

UNICEF is now working to convince people to get jabbed. Dara said: “In most towns you do get internet access and you  see a lot of the young ­people with smartphones.

“But I don’t know the figures for Facebook ­membership in South Sudan, I don’t think it’s very high. Most people get their information from the radio and  some newspapers.

“So we’ve been using radio broadcasts to get information out there and try to convince people they should come.

“And since we’ve opened the vaccination centres around the country, there have been people coming every day but not in the numbers we would like.”The current doses  run out in July and they need to keep more coming. That’s why the Irish Sun is the media partner for UNICEF’s  campaign.

And Dara has noticed throughout his career that Irish people are among the highest donors globally.

He said: “It’s one of the things as an Irish person I’m very proud of. We’re a lot wealthier now than earlier on in my career but still we had a very large ­percentage not just of the ­Government’s contribution, but the average person’s.”

WEAK HEALTH SYSTEM

He added: “There is a very weak health system here, the infrastructure, oxygen . . . the ­system is not here.

“So if there is an outbreak, like what ­happened in India . . . once the virus gets going it doesn’t stop.

“And the other side of it, it’s not just vaccines. There’s a whole system that has to be in place. There has to be a cold chain to get the vaccines out there.

"We have to have needles and syringes, even water at the health centre to ensure hygiene —  all of those things have to go along with the vaccines.

“This campaign   is a great idea if people can afford it. We can utilise those resources to get to as many people as ­possible.”

Just €75 can help deliver enough vaccines to protect 15 people. To donate to UNICEF’s campaign, visit Unicef.ie^[2].

References

1. ^{^} Covid (www.thesun.ie)
2. ^{^} Unicef.ie (Unicef.ie)