Only 2 per cent of South Sudanese vaccinated against COVID

The Undersecretary in the national Ministry of Health, Dr Victoria Majur, has said only two per cent of the country’s population have received the COVID-19 vaccine.

She said the figure is too small compared to the total population of people in the country.

Dr Majur stressed that the department of health promotion is one of the important departments and currently they are faced with a lot of challenges in the health sector-one being the issue of lack of awareness-raising.

“COVID-19 pandemic has been with us for a while now, and we don’t know when it is going to end. It is very important for us to educate our people by disseminating accurate information, “she said.

“We have a lot of work to do and, without the help of the media, we will not be able to reach the remaining 98 per cent. Previously, women were not turning up for vaccination due to misinformation that once they get vaccinated they will not bear children and this is not true,” Dr Majur stated.

The undersecretary said due to the intervention of women leaders through radio talk shows, the number of women receiving the COVID-19 vaccine has drastically increased from 11 to 40 per cent.

She was speaking at an event yesterday where her ministry donated recorders to some media houses across the state to ease journalists’ work on reporting.

“Health is a specialised area, we trained you and will continue training you to provide accurate information because the rumours and misinformation are what are causing us problems,” Dr Majur said.

She urged the journalists to utilise the recorders given to them by the World Health Organisation and the Ministry of Health to disseminate accurate health information to the public.

The recorders were donated to the media outlets that successfully concluded a three-day training on the dissemination of COVID-19 messaging in October last year.

Sacha Bootsma, World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 Incident Manager, stated that there is a severe lack of knowledge about COVID-19 and urged journalists in the 10 states and three administrative areas to educate the public on the virus.

“Spread messages far and wide, protect people and encourage them to get vaccinated,” she said.

Sacha called on community radios at the state level to spread positive messages about the importance of vaccination and to educate the public on how they can protect themselves from COVID-19.