A total of 14,460 COVID-19 vaccine doses were wasted, even as the country struggles to secure enough vaccines to inoculate its population.
Uganda received 964,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses in March and has been able to vaccinate 748,676 people.
But according to the health ministry, many of the doses were wasted because vaccine vials were opened and not used.
According to scientists, vaccines lose their potency and effectiveness if they are exposed to temperatures outside of the required range or when exposed to light.
This implies that once a vial’s seal is punctured, workers have only a few hours to administer them.
Dr Alfred Driwale, the head of the Uganda National Expanded Programme on Immunization-UNPEI says that most vaccines were wasted at the start of the vaccination campaign.
Driwale attributes the wastage to poor vaccination coordination noting that often health workers opened vaccine vials without having at least 10 people present at the vaccination sites.
As a result, few people were vaccinated and the remaining doses in the vials were thrown away because they were not used within six hours of being opened.
Currently, the cumulative confirmed cases in Uganda are 56,949 and 402 deaths after confirming 1,438 new cases yesterday.
