Integrated vaccination programme for Chivi South

Philemon Jambaya

Recently in CHIVI, Masvingo Province

As the world celebrates World Immunisation Week aimed at promoting the use of vaccines to protect people of all ages against diseases, immunisation of kids has been made better by the Ministry of Health and Child Care.

Through funding from the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation availed through Unicef, the Ministry is conducting an integrated Covid-19 and routine immunisation blitz in Chivi South among other areas to bring health services closer to communities.

Mavis Tagwirei, 32, of Ganga Village in Chivi, who has a two-year-old daughter, narrated how villagers sometimes failed to take their kids for vaccinations because of unavailability of transport.

“We used to walk for about three to four hours to Berejena Clinic to get our kids vaccinated. Sometimes we would skip their immunisation days because it will be difficult to walk such a long distance alone so we would make sure that we form a group and walk together,” Tagwirei said.

Addressing journalists at Chishavakadzi Secondary School in Chivi South, Masvingo provincial nursing officer, Cresencia Maphosa praised village health workers for their sterling job in bringing clinics close to home of villagers

“The fact that we are working with village health workers in the vaccination programmes has at least made our job easier. The village health workers are people who are locally based, they know their villages, they know the number of children in their villages and people,” she said.

The VHWs are trained and have registers. They know who has been vaccinated and those who have not,” she said.

She added that young girls between 10 and 12 years are also being vaccinated from the human papillomavirus.

“In as far as immunisation is concerned, as a province, we come up with a targeted population so that we know who is supposed to be vaccinated. When we get the targeted population, we order the vaccines according to the number of people we have,” she said.