COVID-19 Vaccine Wastage in Africa: A case of Nigeria COVID-19 Vaccine
Wastage in Africa
Abstract
The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched campaigns to boost
immunization rates to 70 percent globally by the middle of 2022.
However, despite the global success of about 64% COVID-19 vaccination
coverage, there is a big gap in Nigeria. To date, only 13.8% of the
population has received the recommended dose. This demonstrates a
significant disparity between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.
Amidst the wide gap in vaccination, COVID-19 vaccine wastage still
occurs in Nigeria. At the end of 2021, it was estimated that over a
million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine had been wasted. It is anticipated
that there will be more COVID-19 vaccine wastage in Nigeria, because of
the combined factors that threaten vaccination uptake including vaccine
hesitancy, lack of appropriate storage facilities, poor electricity
supply, insecurity challenges, and inadequate health promotion. This
results in concomitant financial and opportunity losses. In this paper,
we discuss COVID-19 vaccine wastage in Nigeria including causes, and
solutions that can be applied to mitigate this wastage.