On 5 May this year the World Health Organisation declared an end to COVID-19 as a public health emergency. However it was stressed that it does not mean the disease is no longer a global threat.
According to WH0’s Coronavirus Dashboard which has collated key statistics since early in the pandemic, the cumulative cases worldwide were at 765,222,932, with nearly seven million deaths
As of 1st May, a total of more than 13.3 billion vaccine doses had been administered worldwide.
Despite WHO declaring the pandemic as no longer a public health threat, Humanitarian organisation Red Cross Malawi has partnered with African CDC and MasterCard Foundation through Botswana Red Cross Society to run an 18 months project called Saving Lives and Livelihoods focusing on Covid-19 vaccination.
Through the project Red Cross is using volunteers who have been spread in targeted areas to mobilise people to get vaccinated.
The project is being run in 3 districts of Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu and is targeting 70% of the total target population.
In Lilongwe for instance Red Cross in partnership with Amref Health Africa have 11 centres where they are carrying out the vaccination campaigns.
In T/A Njewa’s area Red Cross volunteers have been running door to door campaigns with an aim of reaching out to more people who have not been fully vaccinated.
“I’ve saved on transport and time as these volunteers have found me home here as you can see now after this vaccination I can go back to continue with my household chores.
Otherwise I could have been forced to travel a distance of over 15 kilometres to the nearest health facility just to get vaccinated”, said 39 year old Jane Magwaza which we found being vaccinated at her home in Pheleni Vilage.
Magwaza’s sentiments were also collaborated by Kondwani Jere a Kabaza operator from the same village who said due to the nature of his job he was finding it difficult to spare some time and go get vaccinated but thanks to the Red Cross campaign, he is now fully vaccinated in the comfort of his home.
But how has the response been since the project started over a year ago?
According to Mavuto Kunkhoma who is a Project Coordinator for the Saving Lives project the door to door campaigns have scaled up the numbers of people that are being vaccinated.
“At first when we were just doing these campaigns at stationed camps the numbers were not that impressive but since we started the outreach door to door campaigns we have a tremendous increase in the numbers of people that are being vaccinated”, said Kunkhoma.
According to Kunkhoma here was a general misconception where people were demanding for money to be vaccinated but after through counselling on the importance of getting vaccinated people are now accepting to be vaccinated without being given money.
“If you remember when the Coivid-19 pandemic was at its peak, people were given upkeep allowance by the government of Malawi for survival so that mentality is still there but our volunteers are doing a great job of convincing people with such mentality to have them vaccinated”, said Kunkhoma.
And in his remarks Daniel Nansongole a vaccinator with Amref, WHO’s declaration that Covid-19 is no longer a public health threat also had an impact on the campaign as some people see the vaccine as useless but after being convinced that still more they can suffer from the disease people are now willing to get vaccinated.
The Saving Lives and Livelihoods project is expected to run up top December this year and according to officials they have already reached out to over 40 percent of their targeted population.
