Header Ads

What are the active covid-19 vaccination centres in The Central Region?


In March this year, Kenya's health ministry kicked off a massive COVID-19 vaccination campaign with frontline health workers, teachers and the elderly among the first to receive the vaccine. Due to the high demand of the vaccine globally, the country adopted a phased approach in its deployment.

The campaign kicked off in all the 47 county referral hospitals. Later in the year, the Health Ministry kicked off the second phase of the campaign in which it targeted to vaccinate 9.7 million more Kenyans from July 2021 to June 2022, targeting those above 18 years of age under the national accelerated COVID-19 vaccination campaign slogan – “kuwa shujaa, pata chanjo tufungue nchi.”

The accelerated rollout of the national vaccination campaign eventually saw vaccines rolled out to almost every government health facility at the grassroots. It was later extended to private health institutions, churches and other mobile vaccinations outreaches in counties that have seen hundreds of thousands of residents get vaccinated.

This new effort has seen the government manage to vaccinate 9.74 million people by December 2021. Among these, 4.02 million are fully vaccinated, representing 7.5 percent of the Kenyan population. The global percentage of population fully vaccinated stands at 48.3%.

Those vaccinated have either received the 1st or/and 2nd doses of AstraZeneca, Moderna or Pfizer vaccine with some population already receiving the single Johnson and Johnson vaccine dose.

Initially when this programme was rolled out in March 2021,  the Central Kenya Region which consists of Kiambu, Murang’a, Nyeri, Kirinyaga and Nyandarua counties, had a total of 53 vaccination centres, majorly stationed at public and private health centres.

These centres were distributed according to the population of each area and the risk factor. For instance, Kiambu County with a population of 2.4 million people and with its proximity to Nairobi County, was considered a high risk area and allocated 24 vaccination centres spread across its 12 sub-counties. Neighbouring Murang’a County had 14 centres, Kirinyaga 9 and so on and so forth.

Low number of vaccines and few centres marred the initial exercise with so many people having to be turned away due to the scarcity.

The situation improved later in September 2021 when the government received more vaccines and rolled out the massive vaccination campaign. This saw more centres opened and more intake of the vaccine among the populace.

For instance, the number of COVID-19 vaccination centres in Thika Sub-County increased from the original 2, that is Thika Level 5 Hospital and Kiandutu Health Centre to 13 vaccination centres spread across its 5 wards of Township, Hospital, Kamenu, Gatuanyaga and Ngoliba.

In this new arrangement, Township Ward has 5 vaccination centres, Hospital Ward 2, Kamenu Ward 4 centres, while Gatuanyaga and Ngoliba wards had 1 centre each. These are; Thika Level 5 Hospital, Kiandutu Health Centre, Mary Help of the Sick (private), Thika Sams Nursing (private), Munyu Health Centre, Ngoliba Health Centre, Central Memorial Hospital (private), Boore Medical Clinic (private), Makongeni Dispensary, Tumaini  Medical Clinic (private), Avenue Hospital (private), St. Matias Mulumba Hospital (private) and Naidu Hospital (private).

Multiple other mobile vaccinations outreach centres boosted these centres especially in the months of November and December 2021. This drastically increased the vaccine intake and reduced the long queues that were initially witnessed in the earlier stages of the campaign. Booster doses are now currently available.

So far, the exercise has been so smooth save for a few hitches here and there such as the lack of the most preferred vaccine, Johnson and Johnson, which was only available in few selected stations.

 

No comments:

Powered by Blogger.