Early this year, the country received 964,000 vaccine doses which were distributed to different local governments. The ministry of Health stated that Kampala City Council Authority (KCCA) was one of the local government authorities that received the highest number of vaccines. It is estimated that KCCA received 200,000 doses.
According to the Observer, as of Wednesday last week, the data from the ministry showed that KCCA had the highest number of unaccounted for vaccines in the country. The ministry has directed KCCA to account for 21,000 doses.
Dr Alfred Driwale, the programme manager of the Uganda National Expanded Programme on Immunization says the vaccines in question were given to KCCA, which was in charge of the vaccination in Kampala.
Each person who gets vaccinated is supposed to have their National ID details captured. This data is then forwarded to the health ministry’s vaccination team that updates the uptake of the vaccines from different districts.
However the KCCA spokesperson Daniel NuweAbine has refuted the allegations that the vaccines are missing.
“KCCA has had a surge in demand for COVID 19 vaccines in the last weeks leading to crowding of the health facilities and a backlog in data entry of person’s particulars at the several vaccination points. It’s premature to say vaccines are missing yet data entry is ongoing,” said NuweAbine.
The Ministry announced that the next consignment of vaccines of 175,000 doses is expected to arrive tomorrow. The vaccines will be used to give second doses to persons who have already received at least one dose of the vaccine.