In recent days, Mmegi has reached out, repeatedly for that matter, to the officials involved in this exercise was met with a wall of resistance when trying to clarify the status of the vaccination roll out programme. Batswana are asking questions about when the Covishield jabs, which were welcomed at the Sir Seretse Khama airport about three weeks ago, will find their way into arms. And as the media, often hailed by health authorities as a ‘partner,’ we are equally in the dark as to the latest developments around the vaccination programme.
Both the media and the public’s request to be kept in the loop about the latest developments is not driven by morbid curiosity or a callous desire to pile pressure on our exhausted and overwhelmed health authorities. Rather, the request is driven by the rising cases of COVID-19 evident around us, the hospitalisations of family and friends and the deaths that have become so frequent that people are numbed by pain. For more than a year, disbelief and deep sadness have engulfed the country as Batswana have turned their lives upside down adhering to the various safety protocols and the “new normal” health authorities have asked people to abide by.
