Since the covid-19 pandemic was declared in 2020, 13 billion doses of vaccines against the disease have been applied and more than 60% of the world’s population is immunized with two doses or a single dose, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). ). Only in booster doses, the number exceeds 2 billion injections, and countries like Brazil already administer the fifth dose in vulnerable populations. On the African continent, however, the number of doses applied against covid-19 is only 800 million, in a population of almost 1.4 billion people, which means that only one in four has the basic protection scheme. , without booster doses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of Africa, articulated by the African Union. More than 70% of the continent’s population did not receive any dose, according to the organization, the opposite of the WHO target for 2022, which was to vaccinate 70% of the population of each country with the primary scheme. Those partially vaccinated (incomplete basic scheme) total 29%, those who completed the first stage of vaccination reach 25.6%, and those who received some booster dose are only 3.1%. The vaccine most used in the African continent is the Janssen (33%), whose schedule is a single dose. Completing the top 5: Pfizer (22%), AstraZeneca (17%), Sinopharm (15%) and Sinovac (7.2%). According to the WHO, more than 60% of the doses supplied to African countries came from the Covax Facility, an international consortium for vaccination in middle and low-income countries. More than 50 countries With different realities for its 1.391 billion inhabitants in 55 nations and territories, Africa has countries like Morocco, which vaccinated 63% of the population, and Eritrea, which has yet to reach 1%. The continental network informs that, in general, efforts to democratize vaccination were not enough to ensure that most of the continent reached the WHO target, since only Seychelles, Mauritius and Liberia have vaccination coverage above 70% . Even the economic powers of the continent, South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt, did not reach 40% of the population with two doses or a single dose. A researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) and responsible for cooperation with the African continent at the Foundation’s Center for International Health Relations, biologist Augusto da Silva recalls that inequality marked access to immunization worldwide and explains that logistical and economic reasons meant that many doses that reached the countries of the continent were not applied. “Vaccines arrived very late on the African continent, and afterwards, there were many logistical problems within the countries. Immunization requires a lot of logistics, and many of these countries did not have the money to pay for this logistics”, says Silva, who was born in Guinea Bissau and lives in in Brazil for 10 years. Less than one dose per person Data from the CDC Africa indicate that the continent’s countries have received just over 1 billion vaccines, which is still insufficient for the population of more than 1.3 billion people. Even so, the researcher claims that the central problem is not the lack of vaccines, but the lack of conditions to carry out large-scale vaccination campaigns. “Even if they had 3 billion vaccines, the same phenomenon would happen, because the problem is vaccinating people,” he explained. The biologist points out that part of the problem lies in the high indebtedness of most countries on the continent, which led to the signing of structural adjustment programs with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These contracts mean that increases in expenses and shifts of resources in the budget need to be negotiated with creditors. “These negotiations took a long time”, says Silva. “When you’re under that adjustment, you can’t even hire staff.” In October last year, the World Health Organization warned that, in addition to being low, vaccination coverage against covid-19 was advancing more slowly on the continent. Between July and September, the number of doses applied per month fell by 50%. At the time, WHO regional director in Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, related that the drop in the number of infections contributed to fewer people seeking vaccines. “After a rocky start, the Covax partnership has secured a steady flow of Covid-19 vaccines to Africa,” said Moeti. “Now we are victims of our own success. As vaccines have helped to reduce the number of infections, people no longer fear covid-19 and few are willing to get vaccinated.” Lower mortality Despite lower access to vaccines, the African continent recorded the fewest cases and deaths from covid-19. Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been 175,000 deaths, among the more than 6.6 million victims registered worldwide. The Americas and Europe, for example, totaled more than 2 million deaths each. This discrepancy caught the attention of researchers, recalls Augusto da Silva, who explains the main causes raised. “First, the population is younger [a covid-19 tem mais risco de agravamento em idosos]. In addition, many countries do not have much contact, do not have great connections with other countries, due to deficiencies in the air and port transport system”, he explained. The researcher recognizes that there may be some level of underreporting, but not enough to match the proportion of deaths from other regions of the planet. “If it were just underreporting, we would see people dying on the streets.” Other threats If the epidemiological scenario was already better than the global average, the numbers were even lower in the second half of 2022. The incidence of new Covid-19 infections dropped to around 5,000 a week across the African continent in early October. in December, the month in which all of Africa had less than 200 deaths, while Europe surpassed 15,000. If, on the one hand, the reduction in risk perception fell, on the other hand, the population and governments on the continent were dealing with concurrently with other public health emergencies. Polio outbreaks were recorded again in Malawi and Mozambique in 2022, Uganda declared an emergency due to Ebola cases, and Ghana recorded an unprecedented epidemic of the Marburg virus. “The response to multiple public health emergencies is also affecting the course of vaccination against covid-19. Outbreaks of polio, measles, yellow fever and now Ebola have changed priorities in affected countries”, assesses the WHO.
Agência Brasil
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