Kenya’s 10 million jabs in doubt as AU deliveries set to dip

Kenya might not meet its target to vaccinate 10 million people by the end of December despite buying 13 million Johnson and Johnson (J&J) doses from the African Union (AU).

This comes after the AU, through the African Vaccine Acquisition Taskforce (Avat) at the African Finance and Health Ministers meeting disclosed plans to distribute a total of 12,153,600 doses that will be shared by 33 African and three Caribbean countries by the end of October.

The vaccines are broken down into 4,384,800 for September, and 7,768,800 in October. The AU further broke down the October dispatches to her members in three phases.

“Doses to be delivered as follows; 4th October 2021 - 2,692,800 doses, 11th October 2021 1,891,200 doses and 18th October 2021 – 3,184,800 doses,” reads the official breakdown in part.

It is not yet decided how many doses will be distributed to each member state.

The total number of vaccines committed to AU member states is 205,446,210, 3,048893 to the Caribbean Community, total donations (MTN and MasterCard Foundation) stand at 68,466,667, while new orders expected since the First Joint Ministers conference are 14,622,322 doses.

In terms of finances $130,299,191.97 has been received from AU countries, $5,717,950.55 from the Caribbean Community, while the deposit expected from World Bank stands at $65,117,455.09.

This means that the total deposit at the moment is $201,134,597.61.

According to Africa CDC director John Nkengasong, Africa’s vaccine uptake is at 75 per cent, while America’s is at 60 per cent.

"We want to be able to distribute 27 million vaccines every month because there’s no vaccine hesitancy in Africa as Mr Strive Masiyiwa said,” stated Dr Vera Songwe, the UN under-secretary-general and executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa.

“To be fair, vaccine manufacturers were given restrictions, they are not selling to us, which is why we will now have to solve this by manufacturing our own.

We ask again for intellectual property rights to be made available to us,” African Union (AU) Special Envoy Strive Masiyiwa said.

The Avat initiative was set up as a pooled procurement mechanism for AU members to buy enough vaccines for at least 50 per cent of their needs.

It is managed on behalf of AU members by an alliance of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, as well as the African Export-Import Bank that provides the funding for the acquisition of vaccines and works closely with Gavi-Covax, which recently announced a cut-down on its 2021 vaccine delivery forecast by 25 per cent as dose donations by wealthy countries are too few despite seeking to provide the other 50 per cent to Africa through donations. 

In an interview with the Nation, Amref Health Africa CEO Githinji Gitahi, who is also an adviser to Kenya’s vaccine task force, said the country has no other option but to go ham on the bilateral route.

“The biggest opportunity for Kenya now is bilateral negotiations with friendly countries. I do not think there’s much room for Avat to deliver the Johnson and Johnson (J&J) doses they promised on time because both Avat and Covax rely on the same manufacturers,” the CEO said.

“As a ministry, we are confident that we shall deliver on our promises to ensure that we achieve our target to deliver 10 million vaccinated Kenyans by December 2021. Aware that this year we are celebrating Mashujaa Day, we are aiming to ensure 5.8 million people are vaccinated in the country,” Health CS Mutahi Kagwe said last week during the 17th Health Sector Intergovernmental Consultative Forum.

Dr Willis Akhwale, Kenya’s Covid-19 Vaccine Taskforce chairperson, however, maintains that their goal is to bring in a million doses a month. 

“The global shortage is affecting everyone around the world, but our target remains to inoculate 10 million Kenyans by the end of the year. In August, Johnson and Johnson said they will give us 393,000 doses, but from September, it is projected that once they solve issues between Aspen Pharmacare in South Africa and J&J, everything will remain on the African continent which means they won’t have to do ‘fill and finish’ via the Belgium plant as they have been doing and that is when we will start receiving a million doses a month,” he said.

In August, only 141,600 doses were delivered.

“J&J will be the vaccine that will be used in primary healthcare facilities since it requires less logistics to deploy,” Dr Akhwale added.

The ministry hopes to receive enough to cover the gap of 3.7 million, after 6.3 million total jabs delivered. Some more Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccine doses are expected besides J&J.