Covid-19: Madagascar welcomes its first vaccines with relief

Unloading of vaccines from the Covax device in Madagascar, May 8, 2021. AFP - MAMYRAEL

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After months of procrastination, Madagascar finally received its first anti-Covid-19 vaccines on Saturday morning, May 7, through the United Nations Covax program.

This is the first shipment of 250,000 doses of Covishield, which was received on the tarmac at Antananarivo airport by several officials of the United Nations, chanceries, and members of the government but without the president of the Republic Andry Rajoelina.

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With our correspondent in Antananarivo,

Laure Verneau

The doses arrived on board an Ethiopian Airlines cargo flight.

3% of the population will be covered, with priority given to health workers and people over 70.

A relief for Charlotte Ndiaye, the representative of the WHO, the World Health Organization in Madagascar.

We will be able to

start the vaccination campaign

. We are satisfied, we are happy and I remind once again that the Covax mechanism is a mechanism which gives free vaccines. Thus, the most vulnerable people, as the Minister of Health said, will be able to be vaccinated. So this is an important day. For us, every time we bring a vaccine into a country, it's celebrating life, it's saving lives, and we're happy today.

 "

It must be said that the government subscribed to the Covax facility on March 31 only, while the South African variant was wreaking havoc in the country.

The executive had so far preferred to

highlight the CVO, a traditional remedy

launched by President Andry Rajoelina, a year earlier.

Despite the seriousness of the health crisis, Jean-Louis Rakotovao, the Minister of Public Health, does not deny his strategy.

We see, and this is the study which shows it, that those who have taken CVO do not have serious forms.

So the vaccine will be complementary to the therapeutic arsenal that we have so far. 

"

Still, the President of the Republic, traveling in the south of the country, did not attend the vaccine delivery ceremony.

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Covid-19: vaccines in circulation, the main expected in 2021

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  • Madagascar

  • Coronavirus

  • Vaccines

  • Health and medicine