The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has forced countries to accelerate vaccination to the eligible population to safeguard them against the virus. With an objective to strengthen the efforts towards the vaccination drive in Africa and share best practices and exchange knowledge, NATHEALTH – Healthcare Federation of India in collaboration with Africa Healthcare Federation organised the Indo-Africa Vaccine Summit virtually last week. The summit saw participation from both India and Africa to deliberate and to offer a framework to build resilience towards future emergencies and pandemics.

Speaking about the initiative, Dr. Harsh Mahajan, President, NATHEALTH said that “Covid-19 is a global issue, and it is the need of the hour to join hands with the developing nations to help them accelerate their vaccination coverage to enhance crucial prevention against the virus. Besides lack of vaccine availability, a range of other factors from weak health systems, supply chain, and myths around the vaccine are some of the key reasons behind not achieving the vaccination target set by WHO.  Despite having a huge population spread across diverse geographies that leads to logistical challenges, India has proven its capability by delivering over 1.7 billion doses, setting a record of 25+ million doses in a single day and with over 80% of its adult population fully vaccinated. We are certain that through this Summit, we will regain the required focus on ramping up vaccination drives across nations which are lagging behind.”

According to Dr. Amit Thakker, President, AHF “Vaccination is amongst the greatest pillars of protection against coronavirus. Therefore, NATHEALTH and Africa Healthcare Federation have come together to address some of the critical factors that constrain Africa’s efforts to achieve desired Covid vaccination levels and what can be learned and replicated from India’s vaccination strategy through this initiative. We hope the summit will help enlighten towards promoting effective vaccination models for African countries. This summit is a statement, a proof that together, the public and private sectors can achieve greater results.”

Talking at the summit, Dr Lia Tadesse, Hon Minister of Health Ethiopia mentioned that so far only 3% of global vaccines have been executed in Africa as vaccine delivery is the challenge and is an area where support is required. There is also a need for awareness generation about vaccination in order to reduce hesitancy among the general mass and this is where a strong collaboration between the public and the private sector can play an important role. Achieving last-mile reach needs more funding and mobilization of more resources along with strong political leadership while ensuring end-to-end transparency.

Spotlighting India’s CoWIN system, Dr. R S Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, National Health Authority, Government of India said that developing CoWin as an user-friendly application was the first stepping stone for India to accelerate the vaccination drive. This further accelerated coordination between government and private hospitals. Uploading the availability of the vaccine doses in real-time further strengthened the accessibility of vaccines. Creating a future-ready, multilingual, user-friendly, open-ended technology is a must to accelerate vaccination coverage.