Jubilee News Desk
This might catch your attention more than anything else. Malawi, the landlocked country in southeastern Africa, has incinerated 19,610 expired doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine.
The expiry date on the batch was April 13 and the health officials said the people were not coming to vaccination centres as this date was known to them somehow, hence for building confidence they took the step.
Health authorities said they will reassure the public that any vaccines they do get are safe. Malawi has become the first African country to do this and make it public.
The World Health Organization initially urged countries not to destroy expired doses but has now changed its advice. Uptake of the vaccine in Malawi has been low and health workers hope the move will increase public confidence.
Out of a population of about 18 million people, Malawi has recorded 34,232 confirmed coronavirus cases and 1,153 deaths. Malawi received 102,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine it acquired from the African Union on in March and used almost 80% of them.
But the expiry date on the labels was 13 April and officials say it wasn’t enough time to use them all. Malawi’s principal health secretary said it was unfortunate they had to destroy the vials but the benefits of doing so outweighed the risks.
“When news spread that we had out-of-date vaccines, we noticed that people were not coming to our clinics to get immunised,” said Dr Charles Mwansambo.
“If we don’t burn them, people will think that we are using expired vaccines in our facilities and if they don’t come, Covid-19 will hit them hard,” he said.
Malawi’s health workers struggled to use all of the vaccine doses before their expiry date for a variety of reasons. These ranged from people’s reluctance to take the vaccine to inexperience in rolling out a vaccine programme for adults. Other vaccines that are currently in use have a shelf life of up to 36 months.