Logistical challenges hamper COVID-19 vaccination drives in Africa

By Maggie Fick

NAIROBI (Reuters) -Many African nations are struggling with the logistics of accelerating their COVID-19 inoculation campaigns as deliveries of vaccines to the continent finally pick up, the head of Africa's disease control body said on Thursday.

Only 6.6% of Africa's population of 1.2 billion is fully vaccinated, John Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), told a virtual news conference.

That means Africa is far from reaching the African Union's aim of fully vaccinating 70% of people by the end of 2022, he said.

"What we are seeing now is a lot more vaccines coming in and the uptake is challenged because of the logistics and delivery," said Nkengasong. "It's not necessarily about hesitancy, it's about moving vaccines from the airport to the arms (of people), it's about logistics."

Africa's slow absorption of the vaccines is also affecting the health sector, where only one in four workers has been fully vaccinated, the World Health Organization's Africa office said.

"Unless our doctors, nurses and other frontline workers get full protection, we risk a blowback in the efforts to curb this disease," Matshidiso Moeti, WHO's regional director for Africa, told a separate briefing.