The government plans to target families in the ASAL areas who come for relief food, with the Covid-19 vaccine.
The Health ministry plans to employ this strategy to boost vaccine uptake especially in Northeastern counties which still lag behind.
Counties in the Northern region have continued to lag behind in the ongoing Covid-19 vaccination campaign despite state efforts to boost uptake.
"Remember the President declared drought a national disaster in most of those counties," Health DG Patrick Amoth said on Friday.
"When we start food distribution, that will be a very good entry point for us. As you get food, you get the jab. Chakula na chanjo, maybe that can be our slogan," he added.
Health data shows that as of Friday, 6,857 people in Garissa had gotten their first dose while Isiolo had 4,998 people with at least one dose of the vaccine.
Others lagging behind include Lamu with 4,346, Mandera with 5,989, Marsabit with 2,649, Tana River with 3,065, Samburu with 6,358, Wajir with 4,765, Turkana with 8,210 and West Pokot with 7,496.
Amoth said a meeting held in Nyeri last week resolved to ensure that counties in the region get help in meeting the vaccination targets.
“Counties such as Mandera are vast areas with pastoralist communities, hence we came up with a work plan to ensure such counties get help especially in distribution of vaccines,” Amoth said.
“We have already talked to partners working in the ASAL areas and some such as Red Cross have pledged to help in the outreaches. They are ready to start as early as next week,” Head of vaccines deployment taskforce Willis Akhwale said.
So far, a total of 3,600,187 vaccines have been administered across the country. Of these, total first doses were 2,713,427 while second doses were 886,760 with the proportion of adults fully vaccinated standing at 3.3 per cent.
A total of 141,069 health care workers have been fully vaccinated, 128,633 teachers, 74,529 security officers, 253,920 people aged above 58 and 288,609 members of the public.
Nairobi county on the other hand has vaccinated at least 28 per cent of the population after reaching 864,564 people with at least one dose of the vaccine.
Kiambu has so far vaccinated 250,529, Nakuru 131,028, Nyeri 109,159, Machakos 80,010, Kakamega 49,384, Kirinyaga 53,565 and Kisumu 71,851.
Earlier, the ministry had attributed low uptake of the vaccine in the northern region to few vaccination centres and lack of vaccines.
"Some are huge counties with only one or two facilities vaccinating so low uptake is not always hesitancy, it also has to do with geographical access,” Akhwale said.
The ministry has disclosed that such counties with pastoralist populations will be given priority in the distribution of Johnson and Johnson vaccine which is a single shot.
This will curb the hustle of tracing the recipients for their second dose as has been a challenge with the AstarZeneca vaccine.
(Edited by Bilha Makokha)
