What Chiwenga told Parliament about the coronavirus vaccine roll-out

Vaccination Service Delivery

The actual administration of the vaccine will be done at fixed and outreach points.

One to two outreach teams will be allocated per rural district depending on the size of the district with five people per team.  For example, City of Harare will be allocated 11 teams, Bulawayo 4 teams, Chitungwiza 2 teams to deal with the vaccination.  So vaccination teams will require fuel, lunch and daily subsistence allowances. The assumption is vaccination will be conducted over 10 days in the first round and five days in the second round.  You might be asking why 10 days first – it is because our staff is still learning and obviously when you are starting something you have not yet learnt the tricks and by the second round we think they will be more experienced and they will do it faster because we want to deal with this thing as fast as we can because the faster we go means our people will be given the necessary antibodies and that their bodies will be able to fight the virus.  Supervisors drawn from head offices, provinces and districts will monitor planning, implementation and outcomes.

Let me go to the supply chain management, the immunisation supply chain of Zimbabwe consists of 4 levels which are central, provincial, district and service delivery.  Vaccine distribution follows this channel from central vaccine to 10 provincial, 63 districts vaccine stores and then to more than 1800 service delivery facilities.  The central vaccine stores distributes vaccines to provincial vaccine stores, provinces distribute vaccines to district vaccine stores and district to service delivery as well. Distribution of COVID 19 vaccine will follow the existing distribution structure of routine vaccine and supplies.

The vaccine will be received at the airport and distributed to provinces and districts under police escort.  The vaccine distribution flow chart is there. When the documents are out, Hon. Members will be able to follow and we have also put it in a diagrammatic format so that Hon. Members will be able to follow wherever they will be in their constituencies, whether everything is going according to plan.   We also put our delivery vehicles which will be refrigerated so that they are easily identified if they move in the area.

On the supply chain, distribution planning is based on targeted population per province.  We will ensure adequate supply of potent vaccine to all illegible population.  We shall ensure functional cold chain equipment at all levels.  The cold chain we are talking about is from where the vaccine is manufactured, if it has to maintain a temperature of between 2 to 8 degrees Celsius right up until it has been given to the recipients. It must maintain that temperature, that is the cold chain we are talking about. Any variance to that will cause us problems and we want to make sure this does not happen, and this is why the first consignment which came, my Deputy had to go in there together with the head of the Medicine Control Authority of Zimbabwe and Ministry of Finance to see and to be with the vaccine until they got to Harare.  The vaccine had to be taken to NATPHARM to make sure it is within that same range of temperature. So that is what we are talking about when we say the cold chain.

There will be police escorts accompanying Zimbabwe extended programme on immunisation distribution vans, wherever that van travels it will have police escort.   Distributed to provincial cold rooms with capacity of nine square meters under police escort and distributed to districts with cold chain capacity of an average of 200 litres or two to 3 refrigerators; logistical support for vaccine distribution and cold chain management throughout the period from planning to implementation.  Lastly, supply fuel for central level and provincial standby generators.

So, during this period, we want also to make sure and we are working with the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development to make sure that all our generators in all our areas are working in the event that there is power cut because we are also in the rain season. In the event that there is a power cut, the generators must kick off to make sure that we do not spoil and end up losing a lot of vaccines.  The cold chain capacity description is also included, you will be seeing it in your papers Hon. Members which you are going to receive and we have also put pictures of the cold rooms so that you can see where we are going to be keeping that vaccine and the type of equipment which we will use to keep those vaccines.

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