Statistics provided by the Ministry of Health and Social Services have shown that the Kavango East Region is at the bottom of the vaccination table of COVID-19, compared to the entire country.

This is according to the Deputy Minister of Information, Communication and Technology Emma Theofelus while addressing a stakeholder consultative meeting on the Access to Information Bill tabled in parliament last month.

The bill aims to promote the public’s free access to information held by public entities, and to compel public and private entities to proactively and promptly make information available.

‘The Hardap Region is leading the statistics of vaccination in the entire country with 30 per cent of its population vaccinated,’ she said.

Theofelus called on residents of the Kavango East Region to get vaccinated, stating that the region is the second-last with Zambezi Region being at the bottom of the vaccination table.

She said the Kavango East Region only had 5.7 per cent of its population vaccinated while the Zambezi has five per cent of its population vaccinated.

‘This is a challenge because what it means is that the fewer people are vaccinated the less ability there is to go back to the way things were and to start business activities so that the local economy can recover,’ she stressed.

The deputy minister said the more unvaccinated people there are the more the pandemic will get stronger and more variants will be seen.

Theofelus said the more people are hesitant to be vaccinated the less head immunity the country will achieve and the less the economy will recover.

She said there is a lot of fake information around the vaccines adding that it is human nature for people to fear the unknown.

Vaccines are nothing new she said and that they have been around before stating that many families and children have been vaccinated against polio of Namibia is free now.

Meanwhile the regional health director in the region Timea Ngwira said vaccine hesitancy is one of the biggest problems as some residents still see the vaccines as not safe.

Ngwira said others are concerned about side effects that may come with the vaccines.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency