After turning down a first Covax program vaccine donation, Haiti has now accepted to receive the AstraZeneca vaccines. Haiti is one of 92 low-income countries that is offered the Covid-19 vaccines for free. In April, Haiti had “refused” the World Health Organiztion (WHO) offer of an initial donation of 760,000 doses of AstraZeneca. As a result, Haiti is one of the few countries in the Americas yet to start its Covid-19 vaccination program.
As reported in Haiti Libre, the co-president of the Multisectoral Commission for the management of Covid-19 in Haiti, Dr. Jean William Pape said: “Yes, Haiti has accepted.” He says that Haiti had never refused to use this vaccine but that the Ministry of Health preferred a single-dose injectable vaccine like that of the Johnson & Johnson laboratories.
The recent spread of the disease in Haiti led to a reconsideration of the position. Nevertheless, Haiti has one of the lowest levels of spread of the disease in the Americas. In Haiti very little prevention measures are exercised, and schools were never closed.
As reported, Dr. Jarbas Barbosa, head of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) announced that Haitian President Jovenel Moïse had informed the WHO that Haiti would accept this vaccine. This occurred the day after Moïse spoke up alarmed by a significant rebound of Covid-19 in the country (+454 new cases the first two weeks of May, with a more marked increase in the second week).
The Ministry of Public Health addressed a letter to GAVI, the Geneva-based public-private vaccine alliance that runs the Covax program with WHO confirming that Haiti has agreed to receive the vaccine doses available for Haiti.
The Haitian authorities had rejected the vaccine concerned that the population could reject it after the bad press orchestrated around this vaccine in Europe due to some rare case of atypical thrombosis which would be linked to this vaccine.
While Haiti was rejecting the AstraZeneca vaccine, AstraZeneca vaccines were the first to be applied to the health care workers in the Dominican Republic when the local vaccination plan began in mid February 2021.
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Haiti Libre
20 May 2021