For many other African states, getting the coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines at the airport is simply the first part of a much bigger battle that involves overcoming traditionally weak logistics, as well as infrastructure and resource issues to effectively distribute the jabs.
The fact that the vaccines also require special storage and handling adds to the difficulty, meaning after the videos of the vaccines arriving at the airport and the photoshoots with politicians receiving jabs, health authorities begin climbing mountains, sometimes literally, to distribute the shots. Getting a COVID-19 in the arm for most Africans is the culmination of a lengthy process that begins with jostling in the queue at manufacturers, pushing through the required regulatory approvals, including indemnities, then preparing the tricky local logistics that for some countries may mean a substantial gap between the fanfare photo ops at the airport and actual countrywide vaccination. Local public health authorities are buzzing with confidence, certain that while there is despair that the country is lagging behind its peers in receiving vaccines, once these land, the distribution campaign will be ‘warp speed’, to use a phrase popularised by former US president, Donald Trump. Authorities this week said a budget of P164 million has been set aside for distribution and other vaccine-related costs while pledging to ‘cross rivers and use boats’ to get shots in the arms of Batswana.
