Madrid – Angola is committed to complying with the “zero doses” vaccine target, with the aim of increasingly promoting early childhood healthcare, the minister of Health said on Tuesday in Madrid.
Speaking on the panel “Africa tomorrow, health, prosperity, equality and opportunity”, at the High Level Summit on the Impact of Vaccination, Sílvia Lutucuta explained that the goal is to ensure that all children in Angola are vaccinated.
According to Sílvia Lutucuta, the Ministry of Health have identified 20 municipalities across the country, with more than 60 percent of children yet to be vaccinated and the government is doing efforts to revert this situation.
“An effort is being made in order to reach all these children, to be vaccinated”, the minister said, adding that this operation has the support of Gavi, UNICEF and WHO.
In her speech, the minister said that to combat Covid-19, Angola used new technologies to monitor, in real time, the stock of vaccines, the distribution process and control cold chains.
In order to manage vaccination against Covid-19, she explained, an innovative system was developed for the pre-registration and the nominal digital registration of the Citizen (REDIV), which made it possible to monitor and manage, in an integrated way, the logistical information and administration of the vaccine.
Sílvia Lutucuta said that the “Logistimo/IOTA” digital logistics platform for managing routine vaccines had been extended to the entire country.
On this platform, she explained, vaccines against Covid-19 were included, which made it possible to digitally manage, in real time, the entire logistics chain of vaccines.
According to the minister, the combination of the IOTA and REDIV platforms was also of great value for the implementation of the National Vaccination Campaign against Measles, Polio and the administration of vitamin A.
This action, she said, made it possible to vaccinate about 2,560,000 children under 5 years old with an administrative coverage close to 90 percent and protect about 600,000 people against Covid-19.
Since 2022, Angola has been implementing a set of actions to recover vaccination coverage, introducing the Covid-19 vaccine in routine vaccination.
Angola began, in March 2021, the implementation of the National Vaccination Plan against Covid-19, and saw the cold chain reinforced and expanded. FMA/AL/DOJ
