In a tweet, Presidential spokesperson George Charamba said the Zimbabwean government could consider mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 following resistance from some sections of the population.
Zimbabwe rolled out the voluntary vaccination programme throughout the country this week, which saw over 6000 health workers and other frontline workers immunised.
Vice-President and Health minister Constantino Chiwenga last Thursday became the first Zimbabwean to be inoculated with the Chinese-donated Sinopharm vaccine after the country received 200 000 doses of the vaccine last Monday.
According to Finance minister Mthuli Ncube, Zimbabwe expects to receive another 600 000 doses of the same vaccine early next month which was purchased by the government.However, there has been a low turnout by health workers at most health centres throughout the country, with some saying they were unsure of the efficacy of the donated vaccine.
Charamba posted on his @Jamwanda2 Twitter handle that if persuasion failed on voluntary vaccination, then the government, which has maintained that the programme would be voluntary, according to the Public Health Act, would force people to be vaccinated.
“Generally, the government takes the view of persuasion as a weapon of first instance. Only when that fails does it ratchet up pressure through coercion, especially where minors are involved. You can’t condemn an age that can’t decide to die or take hazards of dying,” Charamba tweeted.
Human rights doctors said the government risked contravening section 52 the Constitution on health rights if it orders compulsory vaccination and that citizens lacked adequate information to make informed decisions on whether to be vaccinated or not.
Responding to Charamba, a human rights doctor, Shingai Feresu, said an order for compulsory vaccination was a violation of human rights.
“Let me be clear here,” he tweeted.
“I don’t see the rationale of compulsory vaccination. As a human rights advocate, this would be a violation of the highest degree. Only when the situation is dire (do) you invoke the Public Health Act. With deaths around 10 per day for a population of 15 million, you can’t invoke it.”
Zimbabwe Nurses Association (ZiNA) president Enock Dongo said the general assessment showed that there was low uptake of the vaccine among nurses throughout the country as at yesterday.
“Health workers lack the necessary information. There are several conspiracy theories against vaccines on social media and health workers are also consumers of that information, hence factual information was essential to dismiss misleading information”, he said.
“Government failed to avail the necessary information to the frontline workers and the public prior to the commencement of the immunisation programme”.
Over the weeks leading to the arrival of the Covid-19 vaccine from the Asian giant, the government has been called out for not wanting to conduct public research on the safety and efficiency of the vaccine as well as engage workers’ representatives who play an important role in positive influence on policy implementation. Health workers were reportedly only trained on how to administer the drug when it was already in the country.
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