Vaccines are generally efficacious disease prevention and sometimes disease eradicating biotechnology. For instance, small pox and Polio vaccines have been celebrated for their efficacy and (near)eradication of killer and debilitating diseases. Arguably global and local health policy agenda evoke these examples to finance, legislate, support production and rolling-out of these life savers, and disease eradicating technologies. On one hand vaccines have been widely accepted and clients willingly access their dozes through routine vaccine centres. Hospitals also frequently conduct outreaches to ensure that nobody is left behind and to improve vaccine uptake. On the other, Covid-19 vaccines were introduced to citizens who experienced it as mild and asymptomatic disease. Thus, communities in Africa that previously revered vaccines as a protection against killer diseases were hesitant and did not readily take the vaccine.
Although many Western and Asian countries experienced Covid-19 as virulent, leading to loss of lives, Africa experienced covid-19 pandemic as a mild and asymptomatic disease. However, due to Africa’s subscribing to the global health agenda, and with its standardised interventions, Covid-19 vaccines were rolled-out in Africa in the same way it was done for other countries. Covid-19 vaccines created (un)certainty and anxiety. Many African countries had to deal with questions concerning access, roll-out of vaccines with short-expiry dates, forcibly vaccinating people – with a vaccine that is only protective from some strains of a highly mutating corona virus. Further states like Uganda which led/enforced Covid-19 vaccine uptake were militaristicl and condoned acts of violence during pandemic containment.
We invite researchers in humanities, biomedicine, anthropology and economics to engage with this experience – of accelerating access for Covid-19 vaccines and health policy change to improve vaccines uptake for citizens who experienced COVID-19 as mild, asymptomatic and a disease of the radio.
