By Martin Chiwanda & Charlie Ligomeka

Machinga, June 5, Mana: Machinga District Health Office has applauded community level stakeholders for putting efforts in mobilizing community members to receive Covid-19 vaccine, making it the best performing district in the country in vaccine uptake.

District Chief Preventive Health Officer, Alfred Phiri, announced of the performance to a full council meeting on Tuesday, saying the achievement is due to efforts by stakeholders which include traditional and faith leaders as well as politicians.

He Machinga’s best performance has put the district on the map making it a role model to other districts.

He added that Machinga is very unique as traditional leaders and politicians played a crucial role in ensuring that their subjects received the vaccine.

“This is a very good achievement for the district which has come because of good coordination with the full council members,” said Phiri.

Traditional Authority (TA) Mizinga, whose area recorded good number of vaccine recipients, said Machinga’s best performance testified their good efforts in mobilizing subjects during campaign against Covid-19 pandemic and cholera transmission. 

“We are happy that Machinga has emerged number one in the Covid-19 vaccine and cholera prevention in the country with 75 percent outreach. This is not a mean achievement in as far as prevention is concerned.

“As traditional leaders, we collaborated very well with all community leaders, Health Surveillance Assistants, politicians and faith leaders to reach out to our subjects to sensitize them on the benefits of the vaccines and dangers of shunning the vaccines,” he said.

He said traditional leaders have proven to have capacity to mobilize their subjects on issues of national importance.

Machinga District registered 1,025 Covid-19 cases and 43 deaths according to the USAID and UNICEF statistics.

Statistics also confirm that two villages of Mbewe in TA Nsanama and Chiundu in TA Mlomba have almost every member vaccinated against Covid-19.

Machinga District fared badly on issues of vaccine until 2022 when the district started new strategies of involving traditional leaders, politicians, religious leaders to mobilize subjects to receive the vaccine.