By Lemuella Tarawallie
UNICEF–GOAL Community Action project, funded by USAID, has helped increase COVID-19 vaccines coverage in communities such as Kambai Town, Bamoi Munu and Kabasa Chiefdoms among others in Kambia District in northern Sierra Leone.
The support for community engagement and Community Led-Action (CLA), facilitated by social mobilizers embedded in vaccination, has helped increase COVID-19 vaccine coverage to 90- 92% in Kambia District.
UNICEF-Sierra Leone, in order to help increase COVID-19 vaccine coverage uptake across Sierra Leone, has actively engaged 299,404 community people in order to make their communities more resilient to COVID.
UNICEF, with support from USIAD and in partnership with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MOHS), started the vaccination process in February 2021 which might run through 2024 and beyond depending on the COVID situation.
The different kinds of COVID vaccines received from vaccine donors are Pfizer, Sinopharm, J&J and Astrazence and the actual number of COVID vaccines handed over to the Government of Sierra Leone from UNICEF is 7,881,300 doses.
The role of UNICEF, with regards vaccination in Sierra Leone, is to provide technical support and guidance to MOHS to deliver effective immunization services through procurement, storage, transportation of vaccines, cold chain equipment, capacity building of health staff on effective vaccine and cold chain management practices and immunization financing support to strengthening of programme management on the uptake of the vaccine service.
UNICEF, through the initiative of the Community-Led Action (CLA) Mobilization, has reached Kagboray, Kadarin and Kamagbuyeleh which were the first 2,480 communities supported under the UNICEF-GOAL project funded by USAID across Koinadugu, Kambia, Karene, Falaba and Kenema Districts. And with the support of USAID, the project is now being extended to additional communities in five districts and to eight new districts for the deployment of 1,310 Community-Led Action Mobilizers.
During a UNICEF-COVID-19 vaccination monitoring tour from Monday 23rd to Thursday 26 January 2023 in Kambia District, the District Social Mobilization Coordinator, Hassan M. Kanu in an exclusive interview at the Kambia District Health Medical Team office, said in terms of coverage for COVID-19 vaccine, Kambia District had recorded coverage of 93%.
Mr Kanu noted that, “the coverage is very good and appreciable”, adding that Kambia had over eight hundred communities and that every community was reached even those in the river-line areas which were very difficult and hard to reach.
“The credit should go to the Community–Led Action Mobilizers for Kambia District to achieve that success”, he noted, adding that the Community-Led Action “is an important initiative because the District Health Medical Team officers take people from the community and train them so that they will be able to do their activities in terms of health raising awareness activities.”
He stated that they had eighty-eight Community-Led Action Mobilizers across the ten chiefdoms. “We have in Kambia District and with those eighty-eight Community-Led Action Mobilizers, we were able to reach every chiefdom in Kambia District because UNICEF, through the support of USAID, has been providing the funding for the training”.
Mr Kanu maintained that with the help of the Community-Led Mobilizers, they were able to do fifteen surges (Mass Vaccination) across the district such as five days or seven days in other to help reach a good number of community people.
According to the Community-Led Action Social Mobilizer in Bamoi Munu, Alhaji Kanu Marah, as Community-Led Action Mobilizers one of the things that they do with regards to the COVID-19 vaccination exercise was that they educate the community members about the vaccine and its importance.
He added that, “we also tell the community people of Kambia District that if they have the vaccine in their system it will help prevent them from contacting the COVID virus”.
Alhaji Kanu Marah stated that, “the percentage coverage for Bamoi Munu Chiefdom in Kambia District is 80%”, and that “we target four communities on a monthly basis for the vaccination”.
He said one of the challenges they were having was that when they told the community people about the importance of hand washing; they always said they lacked the resources to buy Veronica buckets and soap to wash their hands. Arun Issa Kamara, a thirty-year-old resident of Bamoi Munu Chiefdom during an interview on 24 Tuesday January 2023 at the Bamoi Community Health Centre in Kambia District, revealed that he had taken two doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
“I actually did not really want to take it because of the negative rumours and myths about the COVID-19 vaccine. But at the end of it all, the Community-Led Action Mobilizers were able to convince me to take it. Since then, I’ve taken the first and second doses of the vaccine and nothing has happened to me”, Arun disclosed.
It could be recalled that when Sierra Leone recorded its first case of COVID-19 in March 2021, there were lots of issues, challenges and denials around the virus. Even when the Government of Sierra Leone made the vaccine available, misinformation, denials, and rumours made it difficult for the vaccine to be rolled out. So, UNICEF and other health agencies had to come in, through community mobilizers, to dispel the misinformation, denials, and rumours.