Abstract:
More than two years after the start of COVID-19 pandemic, Africa still lags
behind in terms vaccine distribution. This highlights the predicament of Africa
in terms of vaccine development, deployment, and sustainability, not only for
COVID-19, but for other major infectious diseases that plague the continent.
This opinion discusses the challenges Africa faces in its race to vaccinate its
people, and offers recommendations on the way forward. Specifically, to get
out of the ongoing vaccine shortage trap, Africa needs to diversify investment
not only to COVID-19 but also other diseases that burden the population. The
continent needs to increase its capacity to acquire vaccines more equitably,
improve access to technologies to enable local manufacture of vaccines,
increase awareness on vaccines both in rural and urban areas to significantly
reduce disease incidence of COVID-19 and as well as other prevalent diseases
on the African continent such as HIV and TB. Such efforts will go a long way to
reduce the disease burden in Africa.
