World Rabies Day is marked on September 28th each year, with campaigns to educate communities on the dangers of the disease and ways to avoid or eliminate it. The Ministry of Agriculture provided the vaccines, while VSF-Germany supplied other essentials, including drugs. Makerere University, VetConnekt, and private practitioners contributed personnel and expertise.
As of now, 302 people have been affected by the outbreak, with children between the ages of one and five years being the most affected demographic group. In response, health authorities, led by Dr. Fredrick Byenume, the Acting District Health Officer, have launched a mass vaccination campaign targeting children aged one to fifteen years.
Members of parliament on the forum of children’s affairs have urged the government to declare public holidays to scale up vaccination of teachers and students in order to achieve the vaccination target required to reopen schools.
23 million children missed out on basic vaccines through routine immunization services in 2020 accounting for 3.7 million more than in 2019, according to data published Thursday by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF.
Dr. Ben Watmon, the Director Moroto Regional Referral Hospital, says there is a lot of stigma related to COVID-19 and lack of knowledge on the virus. He was addressing a team of Greater North COVID-19 Parliament Taskforce led by Koboko Municipality MP, Charles Ayume.
According to Tumusiime, more than 3,500 people have taken the COVID-19 jab within the last week. He says that those vaccinated include teachers, Journalists, medical workers from various health facilities, the elderly and other front line workers.
Although Parliament passed 18.3 billion shillings supplementary budget for the procurement of the AstraZeneca Vaccines from the Serum Institute of India last month, the Health Ministry says there has been a delay in availing the money by the Ministry of Finance.
Dr Annet Kisakye, the Immunization Focal Person with the World Health Organisation (WHO) says that Vaccine derived Polio is a danger for a country like Uganda, because of cases that have been recorded in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zambia and Ghana.
