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How young people have boosted Africa’s COVID-19 vaccination campaigns
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Amid flagging demand, Doreen Naiga – one of Africa CDC’s COVID-19 vaccination champions – is persuading young folks and persons with comorbidities in Uganda to get immunised.
Law student Doreen Naiga was attending an Africa CDC meeting at Speke Resort Munyonyo, an upscale lakeside retreat not far from Kampala, in July 2022, when a speaker uttered an arresting statistic: just two in ten Ugandans were vaccinated against COVID-19.
It wasn’t because COVID-19 vaccines weren’t available in the East African country, but because Ugandans weren’t demanding them. A similar situation prevailed in much of the rest of Africa.
Naiga – who is pursuing her degree at Uganda Christian University (UCU) – felt angry. COVID-19 had killed more than 3,600 in Uganda and 256,000 in Africa. Why weren’t people taking the vaccines? She went online and read about vaccine hesitancy in Uganda, and further afield.
Two weeks later, she applied to join Africa CDC’s team of young people – Bingwas– who are championing the continent’s effort to vaccinate its population against COVID-19.
Today the young woman has organised immunisation camps in her rural district of Ssembabule in central Uganda and helped to vaccinate more than 200 people against COVID-19.
