Makueni County’s Department of Health intends to vaccinate 100,000 people against Covid -19 through the Rapid Result Initiative (RRI) Campaign that will be carried out in the county for the next 10 days from Friday this week at the county health facilities.
The revelation was made by the Makueni County Referral Hospital Head Nurse and Immunization Services Mr Anthony Mathulu during a County Multi Sectoral Covid-19 RRI meeting held in a hotel in Wote town Thursday.
Mathulu said that the campaign will kick off officially on Friday July 22 and will continue up to July 31 across the county using a multi sectoral approach to ensure many people came out to be vaccinated.
Consequently, he appealed to the area residents to come out in large numbers to make the campaigns a success saying this will go a long way in preventing the spread of the pandemic in the area.
“Vaccination is cost effective in protecting people from getting severe disease. The vaccines are safe and people need to come to be vaccinated against the coronavirus,” said Mathulu.
During the meeting that was attended by officials from the two levels of government and other stakeholders, the head Nurse for immunisation services said that only 180,090 people have been fully vaccinated in the county.
He noted that the 100,000 that are targeted to be vaccinated will improve the counties status in contributing to the national figures of 27 million targeted to be vaccinated by December 2022 which is equivalent to 70%.
Mathulu further said that during the last phases of vaccination about 94,000 people in the age bracket of 18-29 years defaulted in coming to receive the second dose of the vaccine.
“I implore those who received the first and persons willing to be vaccinated to come out and be vaccinated against the Covid-19 disease to protect them from severe disease and death,” he posed.
He revealed that in Makueni over 19,000 people have been tested for covid-19 whereby 3,400 people tested positive and 237 people were killed by the disease across the county.
Consequently, he added the government had invested heavily in vaccines saying there were enough vaccines to ensure each person is vaccinated against the disease across the country.
On her part, Makueni County Health and Education Promotion Officer Bretta Mutisya said there was a need to debunk myths and misinformation being said about Covid-19 pandemic.
In this regard, she urged the multi sectoral teams represented at the meeting to give facts about the Covid-19 disease so that the uptake of the vaccines can improve hence achieve the numbers expected by December 2022.
“We are targeting the church, youth groups, those in sports and public participation groups, this will enable us to cascade the facts to our people in the ward levels,” said Ms Mutisya.
Speaking at the same meeting, the Assistant County Commissioner Nancy Kimutai said that there will be intensive mobilisation and sensitisation across the county to ensure over 70% of the people are vaccinated.
Kimutai said that the chiefs and their assistants will be used to carry out mobilisation and sensitisation at their areas of jurisdiction to ensure the exercise was a success.
The participants at the meeting included health workers from all over the county, Red Cross official, Youth representative, education and the media among others.
By Patrick Nyakundi
