DAR ES SALAAM, April 20 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday praised Tanzania for increasing COVID-19 vaccination coverage.
A statement, issued by the WHO Tanzania Office in the port city of Dar es Salaam, said as COVID-19 vaccine delivery enters a phase of integration with routine services, Tanzania has emerged as the best-performing among 34 African countries for concerted support by the COVID-19 vaccine delivery partnership.
"From a poor coverage of 2.8 percent of the total population by mid-January 2022, Tanzania recorded an exponential increase to 49 percent by the end of January 2023," said the statement.
The statement said because of the dramatic achievement, Tanzania has become the best performer among 34 countries that were below 10 percent of the target population by January 2022.
The World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children's Fund, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance launched the COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery Partnership (CoVDP) in January 2022 to advocate for the urgency in turning vaccine doses into vaccinated, protected communities that had low performance, said the statement, adding that the CoVDP supported the countries overcome bottlenecks to vaccination.
"The rapid increase in COVID-19 vaccination in Tanzania is a consequence of heightened political commitment at the national, regional, and district levels," said Zabulon Yoti, WHO representative for Tanzania.
The first case of COVID-19 in Tanzania was registered on March 16, 2020, and the East African nation has experienced four waves of the outbreak so far and has reported a sustained decline in cases and deaths in the last one year. ■