Five days before the one-year anniversary of Uganda declaring the COVID shut-down, the first vaccines have been given in Bundibugyo. Dr. Amon Bwambale, our medical superintendent, was #1. Scott was #2. I was #3.
This story starts with people like GAVI, the Gates Foundation, the World Health Organisation, COVAX, the researchers at Oxford, the plant workers in India, the Ministry of Health in Uganda, pilots and technicians and nurses. It is a global story of people who took the pandemic seriously, who leveraged emerging technology, who ran clinical trials, who published, who readjusted, who advocated for justice. The mantra of COVAX has been that no one wins until everyone wins. If COVID-19 has brought home truth, one of the main ones must be that we are a global community. We would hope that the world would want the billion-plus people in Africa to be saved, but even for purely self-interested reasons it is clear that we are in a race between variant mutation and the dampening down brought by vaccines and public health practices.
We are thankful that our moms in their 80's, our medically vulnerable nephew, our first-responder kids, have been vaccinated in the USA with the higher-tech RNA vaccines. The USA has a much, much worse pandemic than we do in Uganda. But, we also have very little to fall back on if we get a severe case. So this first dose of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine is a glimmer of hope. This is the vaccine the majority-world will get, because it relies on a more robust delivery vehicle, a modified chimpanzee virus, rather than pure RNA. This vaccine can be kept at fridge rather than intense deep freeze temperatures. It can use existing cold chains and health organisations. It is thought to be 65-85% effective compared to the 95% numbers for others, but we'll take it. The first doses in sub-Saharan Africa (besides South Africa which is a different story) landed within the last two weeks, and Uganda got theirs less than a week ago. Friday a truck with an armed guard pulled into the hospital, and the RDC (top central government appointee in the district) and DHO (District Health Officer) officially received the 3720 doses in 372 chilled vials, escorting them to the hospital's fridge.
Less than 24 hours later, injections began, with health workers. We had been registered, the vaccine teams had been trained, and by 8:30 this morning there were coolers moving to five sites to administer doses. Health workers get three days to get in line, then the elderly, then teachers.
The arrival of the vaccine truck yesterday felt like Christmas, but in a typical wrinkle of the universe it was offset by a crazy series of events including bad news about our court case (extortionist amounts of money being demanded, see our mailchimp prayer letter just sent) and our car breaking down. Not to be deterred, we rode a boda to the hospital (which puts vaccine risks in perspective!). The atmosphere was festive, and Dr. Amon led the way even as others were posting on our what's app groups crazy disinformation that runs around the web. We felt that Dr. Amon, Dr. Scott, and Dr. Jennifer sending photos of receiving vaccines would help public uptake! So far so good.
The world is not yet put to rights. BUT . . . this is one big hooray from Bundi. Now back to life. Back to fixing broken things, praying for mercy, fighting corruption, listening and empathising, hoping for change. Back to a lenten push of prayer for our second son, the one who goes into his final month-long field-exercise exam tomorrow hoping to emerge as an SF officer. Join us in vaccines, in work, in prayer.
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