Saving Children Through the lenses of Vaccines in Uganda

By Pius Sawa

Kampala, Uganda: According to United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) over 13 million children have never received any vaccine at all even before the Global pandemic COVID-19 struck and disrupted the global immunization process.

Uganda has not been left out of the equation as most children have not received vaccines since the civil war in Uganda. UNICEF reports indicate developing countries are most vulnerable.

Between 2010 and 2018, Ethiopia had the highest number of children under one year of age who missed out on the first dose of measles, at nearly 10.9 million children. It was followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo at 6.2 million children, Afghanistan at 3.8 million children, Chad, Madagascar, and Uganda with about 2.7 million each.

According to the United States Agency of International Development (USAID), the COVID-19 pandemic, however, has threatened to roll back progress made on immunization in Uganda. Movement restrictions have meant that fewer patients are able to get the medical care they need, and fears of infection have made many more reluctant to go to health centers.

To address these challenges, the Ministry of Health and its partners have been working to make sure that vital health services, including immunizations, continue as much as possible.

In Nothern Uganda, child vaccination has been a major concern for many parents as a result of missing out on life-saving vaccines against measles, diphtheria, and polio due to disruptions in immunization services.

At St. Monica Health center in Gulu, nurses carry out outreach services, delivering vaccines to children deep in the rural villages, where mothers have difficulties traveling to the health center. This has saved mothers time to travel and instead work more on food production.

Ugandan Government has been carrying out campaigns to demystify some of the myths that vaccines are not safe and are a tool by governments to wipe out the population of Northern Uganda.

Still, in Kiboga, a region in central Uganda where the liberation war also took center stage, many children never grew up normally because most of them were never vaccinated against the killer diseases. But today many parents are championing vaccination as a lifesaver for their children.

At Kopsiro health center on the slopes of Mt Elgon in Bungoma county-Kenya, parents have taken child vaccines as important and are using village groups to campaign against negative attitudes about vaccines.

We followed on how vaccines were given to children and what one parent is doing both as a community health worker as well as a grandparent to encourage young mothers to take their children for vaccination.

With COVID 19, two elders from Kiboga Uganda are supporting the vaccines and encouraging other villagers to go for the vaccine for their children as it will help this farming community to live long to achieve their goals.