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- South Africa is considered well placed to implement vaccination, but it is not.
- Thousands of people have signed a letter asking the Department of Health to act urgently.
- The government’s vaccine procurement strategy has come under fire in recent days.
“We call on the Department of Health to act urgently, transparently, and decisively now to obtain vaccines and implement vaccination, in order to reduce deaths and illnesses, and control the pandemic.”
So read a letter from Professor Heather Zar, a leading public sector pediatrician at Cape Town Red Cross Children’s Hospital, GroundUp reported.
More than 3,000 people had signed the petition at the time of this article’s publication.
Many are renowned doctors, nurses and researchers, including Professor Francois Venter, former director of the Southern African Society of HIV Clinicians, Professor Ntobeko Ntusi, the head of the department of medicine at Groote Schuur Hospital, Professor Lucille Blumberg from the National Institute of Communicable Diseases and Professor Helen McShane from the University of Oxford.
READ | SA needs a concise Covid-19 vaccine implementation strategy
The letter read: “Several effective vaccines against Covid-19 are being produced and many countries have started or are about to start vaccinating, including some low and middle income.
Continuous:
“South Africa has a strong primary health care system. The success of the antiretroviral program shows what the health system is capable of. We are in a good position to implement vaccination.”
The petition asked the health department to begin by vaccinating frontline health workers, followed by those most at risk, including the elderly and people with comorbidities.
“I am a health worker and I want to know that I am not putting my clients or my family at greater risk,” wrote Laila Dalwai, who signed the petition.
Did you leave it too late?
Speaking to GroundUp, Shabir Madhi, a vaccination professor at Wits University, criticized the health department’s vaccine procurement strategy.
He said the department had put all of its eggs in one basket by relying solely on COVAX and leaving bilateral negotiations with drug companies too late.
In an interview on eNCA, Professor Barry Schoub, head of South Africa’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on the development of coronavirus vaccines, said that South Africa could not afford to buy vaccines in advance like many rich countries because it would have meant buying vaccines at risk.
In other words, the government would have had to pay for vaccines that were still being tested, even if they didn’t work.
But Madhi said this was silly.
He added that making an “advance market commitment” with vaccine producers would mean paying only if the vaccine is successfully marketed. That is why countries like Canada have enough committed vaccines to vaccinate their entire population.
A petition from civil society organizations, known as the C-19 Coalition, has also been started.
