The nationwide campaign, which commences from 9th to 15th May 2022, is expected to cover all regional towns and villages across the country with permanent teams stationed at hospitals and mobile agents.
At a recent presser, Sidat Fofana, programme manager on Expanded Programme on Immunisation, highlighted the need for the upcoming nationwide Covid-19 campaign.
“The disease is down but not gone unless we vaccinate at least 60 to 70% of the population this disease is not going to go.” he said.
“When we started, the strategy was static, we were expecting everybody to go to the hospitals to receive the vaccines. Along the way we realised that was not attainable, we decided to shift to a highly mobile strategy by moving in to the communities to bring the vaccinations to the door step of the people, so that the old can get access to the vaccines and vaccination centres by stationing our teams at strategic locations.” Sidat Fofana explained.
The vaccination, Fofana stated, would specifically cover adolescent children.
“We know that children are key in spreading diseases. Children would carry the disease but are never affected because it does not put them to bed. But they would carry it to classes and homes that is why the global body came with a strategy to ensure that we are able to vaccinate children from 12years and above. I want some of this information to sink into our understanding and bear with government to vaccinate this population” Fofana said.
He urged all to get vaccinated to stop COVID-19, saying some African countries that attained 70% overall vaccination are not better than The Gambia.
The Pfizer vaccines, a support from the American government through the Covax facility would be used in the vaccination. The vaccination campaign is funded by the World Bank, UNICEF and WHO.
