The vaccination exercise runs from 8am to 5pm every weekday. However, on Friday, the centre closed at 2pm because there were less than five doses remaining and yet over ten people were waiting to be vaccinated.
Aceng also listed the fifteen best performing districts with Rukungiri topping the list followed by Kanungu and Hoima. Rukiga, Tororo, Bushenyi, Masaka, Mukono, Pakwach and Jinja as the top ten districts. Kampala came in 14th place performing worse than hard to reach districts of Kalangala, Bukedea and Namisindwa.
While both vaccines have been faced with a slow uptake, experts say the biggest problem faced with HPV which was launched in the country more than five years ago is failure by girls and women to complete their three jab doses. Catherine Nabbanja, the Principal Nursing Officer at Kawempe told URN that they are using this outreach to give health education on not just the relevance of vaccines but also urging participants to take ensure that they finish their doses.
Some of these people, including those who got the COVID-19 jab from the hospital, told Uganda Radio Network that the low number of patients at the moment could be because many people are scared because the hospital also has COVID-19 patients. Others say the public should overcome its fear of COVID-19 and instead comply with the standard operating procedures such as avoiding crowds, wearing face masks and maintaining social distance among others.
According to the minister, nurses are showing naivety of their skill in carrying out vaccination. She says instead of health care workers handling the vaccine vial at the head or cover, they are touching it from anywhere which can affect the efficacy of the vaccine. She says they are not supposed to touch the body of the vial
