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Council of Churches in Sierra Leone has engaged religious leaders at regional level on Covid-19 Vaccination acceptance.
The two-day conference which was held at the CCSL Conference Hall in Freetown over the weekend acted as the over dialogue session on barriers and facilitators of covid-19. Welcoming the participants, the General Secretary of the Council of Churches Sierra Leone, Mrs. Kezia Kargbo said that they have targeted religious leaders in fight against covid because they believe that religious leaders are the best to transmit messages.
She continued that for the Rev Christiana Sutton-Koroma, speaking on behalf of the faith leaders said Sierra Leone was doing well in the fight against covid. She said the first case of COVID-19 was announced o the 31st of March 2020. With a population of 8,000,000, she continued, the country reported over 7665 cases with 125 deaths and 484 recovers.
According to Salone Times Newspaper, the project Coordinator from Christian Aid Sierra Leone, Joanna Tom-Kargbo said since covid was declared a pandemic in 2020, a lot of hurdles have been cleared especially with the variants of Delta and Omnicon. She pointed out that the most effective way to fight against the pandemic is through the vaccine. She said that since the introduction of the vaccine, the uptake of the vaccine in Sierra Leone is merely 11%. She therefore called on interfaith leaders to encourage their various congregations to take and increase the uptake.
In his intervention, the Child Manager EPI, Dr. Desmond Kangbai informed that the age for the uptake of the vaccine has been lowered to 12 years. He said statistics still show that the uptake in the country is still low, but results are encouraging as there has been an increase in the uptake of the vaccine since its introduction. He said a lot of surges have been undertaken and they are even planning a sixth surge which is scheduled to start on the 20th of this month.
In his keynote address, the Health Committee Chairman of Sierra Leone Parliament Honorable Moses Mbamba Jorkie stated that it had been two years now since covid was declared a pandemic. Sierra Leone parliament has witnessed the critical role of faith leaders in promoting access to vaccines and advocating on behalf of the people to access basic and quality health care. He highlighted the four points in which the interfaith leaders have been engaged in:
1. Engagement and dissemination of messages in communities and though the media.
2. Engagement of duty barriers on key policy issue for example, the implementation of covid-19 rules/laws
3. Promoting the right of citizens on covid-19 vaccine access through advocating for equitable distribution and uptake.
There are many more on the role of faith leaders with regards to vaccine equity, which they will share shortly.
In his conclusion Sheik Ibrahim Sesay said the religious leaders have a strong history of social change to the use of the scripture. Whatever messages come from the government should be transmitted to religious leaders who are capable of changing the behaviour of the people. He thanked CCSL and Christian Aid for creating the platform for religious leaders to carry out their mandates.
