CAR Opposition Raises Alarm Over Lack Of National COVID-19 Vaccination Plan

The government of the Central African Republic has no plan in place to manage the coronavirus vaccination which risks jeopardizing the national campaign despite sizable foreign donations of vaccines, the spokesman for the Union for Central African Renewal party's leader, Anicet-Georges Dologuele, told Sputnik

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 31st March, 2021) The government of the Central African Republic has no plan in place to manage the coronavirus vaccination which risks jeopardizing the national campaign despite sizable foreign donations of vaccines, the spokesman for the Union for Central African Renewal party's leader, Anicet-Georges Dologuele, told Sputnik.

The car has already received nearly 1 million COVID-19 vaccine doses in donations from China, France and Russia, which the opposition party considers an "enormous" amount for a country with a 4.7 million population.

"We fear that the donations and the aid that we receive from abroad to fight against this virus is very badly managed," Christian Gazam-Betty said.

Some of the vaccines require very specific storage conditions, in freezing temperatures, and the CAR government has still not arranged for proper cold storage facilities to prevent the vaccines from going bad, according to the spokesman.

"The sanitary crisis is badly managed in the CAR. To govern means to foresee, to anticipate things, and today the CAR has no plan at all to fight against the spread of COVID-19 in the country. And this is our deep concern," Gazam-Betty said.

The communication strategy has also been poor, according to the spokesman, as the government neither outlined the order of vaccination nor duly followed up on the application of prevention measures for those who are still awaiting to get inoculated.

"The government has to wake up now," Gazam-Betty said.

According to the World Health Organization's Africa Regional Office, the continent has so far registered just over 3 million COVID-19 cases and 77,000 deaths, which makes it the second-least affected region. The CAR accounts for 5,161 cases and 67 deaths, as of Tuesday, with the country's toll having gone abruptly up in the period from last May to July.