(3 minutes read)
- Ugandan authorities may legally mandate people to undergo vaccination to protect against spread of Covid-19 and its variants
- It is seeking to legally mandate vaccines in draft legislation aimed at boosting the East African country’s drive to inoculate more people against COVID-19
- The proposed bill calls for a six-month jail term for failure to comply with vaccination requirements during disease outbreaks
Ugandan authorities may legally mandate people to undergo vaccination to protect against spread of Covid-19 and its variants. It is seeking to legally mandate vaccines in draft legislation aimed at boosting the East African country’s drive to inoculate more people against COVID-19.
The proposed bill calls for a six-month jail term for failure to comply with vaccination requirements during disease outbreaks. The proposed legislation will be subjected to severe scrutiny. Many citizens and pollical parties are supporting the move, while there are views against making it mandatory.
Attempts by Ugandan officials in recent months to enforce limited mandates could not yield any results. A vaccine requirement for people using public transport faced opposition from operators. Bars and restaurants have returned to business after an extended lockdown. But they give only scant attention to safety measures.
Uganda destroyed more than 400,000 vaccine doses after they expired before being used. That’s a considerable loss to a government that has administered only about 12.7 million doses. The government is committed to cover at least half of its 44 million people.
President Yoweri Museveni had warned last year that local officials would be held accountable for any expired doses, That has put pressure on them to administer substantial batches of vaccines that often arrived with looming expiration dates.
