The rollout of vational vaccination schedule for other infections, among them Human papillomavirus (HPV) and Hepatitis C have been disrupted by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Rwanda Today has learnt that the govenmnet has not been able to carryout vaccination against HPV. The three-dose vaccination that is carried out three times a year on girls aged between 11 and 14, is usually given during public campaigns.

The above vaccines require campaigning and programming as they are not given a routine basis.

Vaccination takes place in schools but given that they were closed for about eight months, the exercise was not possible.

However, adjustments were made with some vaccine doses channelled to health posts at cell level for girls to access them.

The majority of the benefi ciaries did not access health posts due to travel restrictions and lockdowns.

“Outreach and access were the key barriers. Some benefi ciaries could not access our vaccination sites and our teams could not reach them. HPV vaccines were in particular the most interrupted...,” Dr Felix Sayinzoga, Division Manager of Maternal Child and Community Health at Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC) told Rwanda Today.

Now, RBC plans to conduct a follow up campaign to reach beneficiaries who missed out on some dosses.

Dr Janvier Serumondo who is in charge of Hepatitis C vaccination campaigns at RBC said the vaccination needs awareness, which did not happen for the whole last year.

The campaigns were usually carried out multiple times a year.

According to the World Health Organisation Africa, there is low demand for the HPV vaccine as countries focus on rolling out the Covid-19 vaccine, and access to eligible girls is limited due to school closures and government-imposed lockdowns.

The target was to have 35 countries introduce the HPV vaccine by 2020, but only 16 countries have been able to meet that target.

In addition to low access by the beneficiaries, there has been lack of awareness since the attention was diverted by Covid1-19.