Security to arrest sabotagers of yellow fever vaccination campaign

KABALE, UGANDA: Security in Kabale district has threatened to arrest and prosecute anybody who will be found decampaigning the planned mass vaccination campaign against the Yellow Fever Disease by the Ministry of Health through the dissemination of wrong information.

The Ministry of Health is targeting Ugandans aged between nine months and sixty years to be vaccinated against the disease from 9th to 13th June 2023.

Speaking on Monday, June 5, during the launch and District’s coordination meeting held at Kabale District Council Hall in Kabale Municipality, the Deputy Kabale Resident District Commissioner Andrew Ronald Bakak said that they have alerted all Gomborora Internal Security Officers and other security agencies to arrest everybody found to be disseminating decampaigning messages to the public about the vaccine against Yellow Fever Disease.

He noted that between 2020 and 2021, security struggled with some people who de-campaigned the vaccination drive against Covid-19 which he said that this will not be tolerated again.

The Kabale District Health Officer Dr Gilbert Arineitwe Mateeka said that a team of five people will be deployed to every 105 vaccination centres in the entire District.

He added that the District is targeting 400 people at every vaccination centre daily and 200,000 total vaccinated people at the end of the campaign. He asked the targeted people to embrace the vaccination saying that the vaccines are safe for the health of humans.

According to the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Health Dr Diana Atwiine, they have now acquired 13,397,640vaccines where every Uganda aged 9 months -60 years is expected to get one jab in 6 sub-regions of the country with Kigezi allocated 1,419,594 doses.

Uganda is one of the 14 African Countries that reported confirmed cases of yellow fever in 2022 even though there is a global campaign to eliminate the disease.