Kabul | Afghanistan launched the first phase of its COVID-19 vaccination campaign on Tuesday, which is currently extremely limited in a country ravaged by violence on a daily basis.
Doctors, journalists and members of the security forces were among the volunteers to whom the AstraZeneca vaccine was administered, 500,000 doses of which were given in early February by India, during a ceremony at the presidential palace.
The Head of State, Ashraf Ghani, welcomed the operation he attended, seeing it as “a great opportunity for the Afghan people”.
As a first step, 250,000 people must be vaccinated, each receiving two injections.
“We do not expect a miracle, but we must do our best to implement this campaign in a fair way,” said Acting Minister of Health Waheed Majroh.
Official figures show 55,300 cases of coronavirus contamination, for 2,400 deaths.
But a study by the Ministry of Health published in August estimated at 10 million, or nearly a third of the Afghan population, the number of people actually infected with COVID-19.
The pandemic apparently began to spread in Afghanistan in early 2020 when infected migrants returned from neighboring Iran, the then worst-affected country in the region.
The government has tried to limit the spread of COVID-19 with containment measures, but these have been very poorly respected, in particular because of the extreme poverty that afflicts the vast majority of Afghans.
Devastated by decades of war and facing further escalation in violence in recent months despite ongoing peace talks, Afghanistan has limited capacity to test and monitor the epidemic.
In recent months, the spread of the virus appeared to be slowing down, based on official statistics. But President Ghani recalled Tuesday that the threat was “still present” and warned of the appearance of “new variants of the virus”.
The conflict has hampered previous vaccination campaigns against other diseases, such as polio. Large swathes of the country are beyond central government control and it is difficult for vaccination teams to access them.