Brussels – Reuters
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned that vaccination rates for the “Kovit-19” epidemic in Afghanistan have fallen by 80 percent and will be valid after the “Taliban” movement seizes control of the Afghan capital, Kabul. Half of what the country has received. So far almost done.
The Taliban captured Kabul on August 15, capturing much of the country after the United States decided to withdraw its troops to end the already twenty-year war.
A UNICEF spokesman said the number of people vaccinated against Kovit-19 had dropped by 80 percent since the Taliban took control.
In the week that UNICEF data began on August 15, 30,500 people were vaccinated in 23 provinces in 34 provinces, compared to 134,600 in 30 provinces in the previous week.
UNICEF coordinates the distribution of vaccines through the World Health Organization’s Cofax mechanism. “The decline is understandable,” a WHO spokesman said. In times of chaos, conflict and emergencies, people make their safety and security a priority, ”he said, calling on all health workers in Afghanistan, including women, to return to work.
A spokesman declined to comment on whether the drop in vaccine rates was the result of suspicions about the Taliban’s vaccines, but warned of the dangers posed by the long-running recession in the vaccine campaign. A spokesman said the validity of the “Johnson & Johnson” vaccine so far received in Afghanistan would expire in November.
As of August 20, WHO data showed that only 1.2 million doses of vaccines had been distributed in Afghanistan. There are about 40 million people in Afghanistan.
