COVID-19, measles, and yellow fever: The need to reinforce vaccination in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Abstract

The immunization programs have been jeopardized all over the world due to the stay-at-home constraints imposed, to mitigate the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This has directly or indirectly placed the global health care system in peril, resulting in an overlapping public health crisis. With this commentary, we aim to accentuate the need to reinforce vaccination in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in lieu of the intersecting COVID-19, measles, and yellow fever outbreak, besides, providing recommendations so as to help alleviate the situation.

COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptability Among Healthcare Facility Workers in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda: A Multi-Centre Cross-Sectional Survey

“…The vaccine launch was initially scheduled for March 2021 but postponed following the temporary suspensions in rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe (due to the small risk of thrombotic events described above) [24]. Whilst the vaccination campaign in the DRC started just a month later, rapid and extensive spread of vaccine-related rumours across the country and the president's vociferous mistrust in the vaccines meant that uptake was very slow [28,29]. This is reflected in the results of this study, with no study participants from Goma having received a COVID-19 vaccine by the time of the survey (conducted 2-3 months after vaccinations started), and less than half reporting willingness to be vaccinated.…”

“…A public health official from the DRC expressed concerns that distrust in the vaccines was amplified by the "unfortunate communication around AstraZeneca in Europe" [30]. Nonetheless, the poor uptake of COVID-19 vaccines in the DRC follows a history of multiple outbreaks of measles and yellow fever occurring in the country over the past decade due to inadequate coverage of the respective vaccines, partly resulting from low vaccine acceptability [28].…”

Tackling the resurgence of monkeypox in Africa: challenges and strategies for eradication

“…2). It is a great concern that regions faced with these existing outbreaks still must deal with monkeypox outbreak [20,23] . Consequently, the fragile health care system in the African region broke down due to excessive strain.…”

Marburg virus disease amid COVID-19 in West Africa: an emerging and re-emerging zoonotic epidemic threat, future implications and way forward

“…5 , 23 , 24 Multiple outbreaks of infectious diseases remain a significant threat to public health, especially in the African region; however, little attention has been paid to enhancing health surveillance systems. 5 , 23 , 25 , 26 …”