COVID-19: Red Cross gets $350,000 to accelerate vaccination of Nigerians
The International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) and Red Crescent Societies has received $350,000 from Coca-Cola Foundation to boost COVID-19 vaccination in Bauchi, Bayelsa, Kogi, Ebonyi and Edo states.
This was consequent upon revelation by the Nigerian Red Cross Society (NRC) that it had created risk communications and community engagement campaign centres in the five states to accelerate immunisation.
NRC’s Secretary-General, Abubakar Kende, who spoke in Abuja, at the launch of the programme, with the theme: “StoptheSpread of COVID,” observed that pandemic was not yet over.
In her remarks, Coca-Cola’s Director of Public Affairs and Sustainability, Mrs. Amaka Onyemelukwe, pointed out that the foundation “is an old ally of the Nigerian Red Cross and even funded its fight against the then, newly emerging COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.”
Onyemelukwe said she looks forward to working with NRC in the future.
Read Also:
Read Also: Red Cross: The Cause For Low COVID-19 Vaccination Identified
Also speaking, Operations Manager for IFRC, Hopewell Munyari, stated: “We are proud as a federation to assist the society in making sure that communities have access to information on the COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
“Most of the COVID-19 protocols have been relaxed, but it doesn’t mean that the disease has gone or is not killing again.”
Meanwhile, a mathematical modelling study, yesterday, found that vaccines reduced the potential global death toll during the pandemic by more than half in the year following their implementation. Published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, the survey said in the first year of the vaccination programme, 19.8 million out of a potential 31.4 million COVID-19 deaths were prevented worldwide, according to estimates based on excess deaths from 185 countries and territories.
It estimated that a further 599,300 lives could have been saved if the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) target of vaccinating 40 per cent of the population in every country with two or more doses by the end of 2021 had been met.
