By Mabinty M. Kamara
As part of the American government’s contribution to the fight against the coronavirus disease in Sierra Leone, the new United States Ambassador to Sierra Leone, David Reimer has on Wednesday 8th September 2021 handed over to the government of Sierra Leone 151,200 (one hundred and fifty-one thousand, two hundred) jabs of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.
This is the third vaccine shipment that Sierra Leone has received through the COVAX mechanism, which was designed to accelerate the development and manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines. The country has so far received a total of 838,000 doses of vaccines through other partners such as the Africa Union/AVAT facility and the government of China, according to officials.
In his statement at the handing over ceremony of the vaccines to Sierra Leone’s Health authorities in Freetown, Ambassador Reimer said the shipment of Johnson & Johnson vaccine is part of a larger vaccine sharing arrangement that President Joe Biden committed to, and which further strengthened COVAX’s mandate. “It is part of an initial donation of 80 million vaccines from our domestic COVID-19 vaccine supply, being shared through COVAX. Equitable global access to safe and effective vaccines is essential to ending the pandemic. In order to stop the spread of COVID-19 and its variants, we must vaccinate as many people as possible, as quickly as possible,” he said.
Speaking on the US government support to Sierra Leone, he said the U.S. government has provided more than $16 million to help the country prevent, detect and respond to the health crisis, while also helping to strengthen the resilience of the health system.
“Support has included the promotion of and community engagement around, COVID-19 prevention measures, rehabilitation of water and hygiene facilities, provision of food and livelihood assistance to help Sierra Leoneans support basic needs; procurement of lab equipment, basic medical supplies, and personal protective equipment, water/sanitation and hygiene supplies, and refrigerators to store Vaccines, and the provision of technical assistance to strengthen surveillance and maintain essential health services,” he said.
In his statement, Sierra Leone’s Minister of Health and Sanitation, Dr. Austin Demby acknowledged the contribution of the United States in supporting Sierra Leone’s health sector noted that the U.S was able to deploy 1,500 personnel to work in the country at every aspect of the response including diagnoses, lab testing, surveillance, epidemiology amongst others.
“It didn’t just help us to respond, but it helped us build systems, every response we see today in the COVID reaction in Sierra Leone is built out of that engagement we had with our multi-lateral partners in which the US is a major part,” he said.
He noted the recently announced Global Fund grant to the country to fight HIV, TB, Malaria and an additional fund to help mitigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the progress made in the fight against those diseases. He added that the U.S government contributes 30% to all the investments of the Global Fund.
He noted that the J& J vaccine is going to make a major contribution in the fight against the pandemic considering its single-dose nature that can be administered without difficulty to the people in the rural community.
He therefore encouraged all to be vaccinated if the country was to win against any possible fourth wave that may emerge.
“What will prevent a third wave is that if we are vaccinated and ready for it. Now we have a full complement of vaccines. We have the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, we have the Sinopharm vaccine, and we have the AstraZeneca vaccine. All of these vaccines are safe, all of these vaccines are efficacious, all of these vaccines are free and we know that when people are determined they will get this vaccine,” he said.
Copyright © 2021 Politico (10/09/21)
