HAITI hasn’t vaccinated a single person — which puts them and South Floridians in danger | Editorial
APRIL 09, 2021
PAHO spokesman Daniel Epstein said Haiti has not yet completed all the regulatory steps to authorize the import of the AstraZeneca shots. It also only recently completed several legal and administrative processes required by COVAX and vaccine producers.
“There are some administrative and legal processes regarding decisions that were made just a few days ago,” Ugarte said. “We need to complete the processes so that Haiti can receive vaccines.”
The country is so far behind in preparing for the shots that even when offered free vaccines through India earlier this year, the government asked that they be sent later, an official said.
In February, India offered Haiti 10,000 doses of Covishield, the India-produced version of the AstraZeneca vaccine, as part of the nation’s efforts to ship vaccines to low and middle-income countries in the region. But the country wasn’t ready to store and administer the shots, and ended up asking India to hold off and try sending them again later, Dr. Lauré Adrien, the director general of Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health and Population confirmed to the Miami Herald.
Adrien said that without a well-established vaccination strategy and proper storage it “just didn’t make much sense” to accept the donation at the time.
“We would end up with 10,000 doses that would have been expired and need to be destroyed,” Adrien said. “We had to postpone it to a later date in time for us to assure good use of this precious but perishable gift.”
The country also raised concerns about storage and conservation of COVID-19 vaccines with Gavi, the Geneva-based public-private vaccine alliance that is leading COVAX with the WHO.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article250527454.html