Breaking the Barriers to Accessing COVID-19 Education and Vaccination

One of the things we at Inspire World International Foundation found out about the low rate of COVID-19 vaccinations in Abuja is that not many people and communities are hesitant about taking the COVID-19 vaccine. They just lack access to COVID-19 education and vaccination services.

To solve this problem of access to COVID-19 education and vaccination services, we collaborated with Emerging Genderplus Outreach Team (Trusted CBO) in Tunga Maje community, Gwagwalada, FCT Abuja to carry out a COVID-19 education and vaccination outreach.

Family heads were mobilized to listen to us as we debunked popular misconceptions and misinformation about COVID-19 and the various vaccines available. We took the time to answer their questions using science-based information. We believe that family heads are a strong influence in determining if an entire family will get vaccination. So if we can get this highly respected members of the family vaccinated, it would be easier to get the rest of their families vaccinated. We are glad we used this innovative approach.

We also facilitated a partnership with the Nigeria Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), who are the government approved COVID-19 vaccine providers in Nigeria, to come into Tunga Maje community and vaccinate interested community members. By doing this, the barrier of lack of transportation to accessing COVID-19 vaccination was taken care of. For those we were not technologically savvy, we facilitated their online registration before taking the vaccines. We also provided interpretation services for those who had language barriers.

At the end of our COVID-19 education, 34 community members were reached, out of which 30 of them received the first dose of the Moderna vaccine. The community members were glad that we could provide them with convincing information that helped them to make informed decision.

We are glad for this great win and we are looking forward to facilitating the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccination. We say well done to our trained Global Youth Mobilizer, Oyira Egot, who is also the founder of the community based organization we partnered with. Their existing presence and trust gained within the community, made access and mobilization easy for us.

Also, we want to say thank you to Global Youth Mobilization for funding this project. We are unstoppable together.