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Tanzania first female president kicks off COVID vaccinations after year long denial

 


Tanzania first female president kicks off COVID vaccinations after year long denial

Damilare Dosunmu30th July 2021
Tanzania first female president kicks off COVID vaccinations after year long denial

Tanzania's President Samia Suluhu Hassan receiving her Johnson & Johnson vaccine at State House in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Image source: Reuters

“I’m a mother of four, a grandmother of several grandchildren, and a wife, but most of all I’m the President and Commander in Chief. I wouldn’t put myself in danger knowing that I have all these responsibilities as the shepherd of the nation,”

Those are the words of Samia Suluhu Hassan, Tanzania’s president, during a ceremony at the State House in Dar es Salaam.

On Wednesday, Hasssan who was sworn in two days after the death of John Magufuli, former president and one of Africa’s most prominent Covid-19 skeptics, launched the country’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign on live TV.

At the event, she took the first vaccination shot ever in the country while the country’s Prime Minister, other ministers and some prominent religious leaders were vaccinated after her. 

Tanzania was a beneficiary of the United States COVAX scheme, the global initiative that provides low and middle-income countries with vaccines, and it received over a million Johnson & Johnson shots. 

We lead by example, they say, so It’s not strange for the head of a nation to take the first vaccination. In fact, it’s the standard. But in a nation like Tanzania where its leadership had been an unrepentant anti-vax, this development is a big deal. 

The decision to televise the event is also a crucial first step in reorienting the public opinions of Covid-19 in Tanzania, considering the nationwide denial of the presence of the virus led by Magufuli.

Prior to President Hassan’s bold move to overcome public misconception about the virus, Tanzanians were encouraged to believe that COVID-19 is a facade, or a pick-one-leave-one virus that only infect Godless people.

In the early days of the pandemic, Magufuli downplayed the seriousness of the virus and urged citizens to turn back to God and “pray coronavirus away.” He believed the virus can’t manifest in the body of a believer of Jesus Christ.

When vaccines were released and other African countries were raving about acquiring some, he questioned the safety and refused to join in procuring shots for his people, instead he encouraged them to use herbal medicine and steam treatments.

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