Expert calls for govt’s urgent intervention to stop vaccine waste

Wealth experts have said the loss of more than 80 000 Pfizer vaccines was an indictment against the management of the pandemic in SA, as the department of health said the at least R13 million worth of Pfizer vaccine doses would be destroyed at the end of the month, as they have reached their expiration dates.

The value was first quoted by the department as R30 million, but has since been recanted to R13 million.

Epidemiologist and public health expert Dr Jo Barnes said the delivery of vaccination services was in disarray with large numbers of vaccination stations closed.

Although government publicly called on people to get vaccinated, it was harder to find an open site every day.

“This is a management problem that should be rectified urgently from the highest levels of government,” she said.

“The knee-jerk reaction to blame the people is getting out of hand and should be stopped. It only makes the vaccine-hesitant less likely to present for vaccination. It is unhelpful.”

The senior lecturer emeritus at the University of Stellenbosch’s department of community health said all those doses lost not only represented significant financial losses, but also the potential loss of lives that could have been saved or serious illnesses prevented.

Private physician and former chair of the South African Medical Association (Sama) Dr Angelique Coetzee said the association had urged the department to allow general practitioners (GPs) and other medical doctors to register on the master facility list, which would allow them to administer the vaccination to their patients.

“Nearly a year later, the system still doesn’t allow GPs to register, only pharmacists,” she said.

“So if we had better vaccine access – for patients, especially when they go see their doctors, I’m quite sure we would have salvaged the 80,000 vaccines.”

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The deputy vice-chancellor of research and innovation at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Prof Mosa Moshabela, tweeted while SA was set to destroy 80 000 vaccine doses, there was an additional, 400 000 doses of vaccines which were lost through wastage and unused open vials.

“We want vaccine equity and justice, and we must show up by not wasting vaccine doses,” he said.

According to the Amnesty International Report 2021-22: The State of the World’s Human Rights, many people from Africa were denied life-saving vaccines and driven deeper into global inequality, with most African countries left struggling to recover from Covid due to high levels of inequality, poverty and unemployment exacerbated by unequal distribution of vaccines.

“Wealthy states colluded with corporate giants in 2021 to dupe people with empty slogans and false promises of a fair recovery from the Covid pandemic in what amounts to one of the greatest betrayals of our times,” Amnesty International said.

The report also found that with less than 8% of the continent’s population fully vaccinated by the end of 2021, Africa held the lowest vaccination rate in the world.

“Too often, supplies were insufficient, or their arrival times unpredictable, making it hard for governments to build trust among their populations and structure effective rollout campaigns,” the Amnesty International added.

“In countries like DRC, Malawi and South Sudan, vaccine deliveries arrived with short expiry dates, forcing authorities to destroy supplies or return the bulk for reallocation to other countries.”

Nearly 840 000 vaccines apparently expired in Kenya recently, with about 2.8 million vaccines estimated to have expired across the African continent, according to devex.com.

– reitumetsem@citizen.co.za