NEHAWU CALLS ON WORKERS TO SUPPORT THE VOOMA VACCINATION CAMPAIGN DRIVE

Thursday November 11, 2021

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] calls on all its members, workers and South Africans to support the national Vooma vaccination drive weekend scheduled for Friday 12th – Sunday 14th November 2021 across vaccination sites in all municipalities in the country.

This vaccination drive forms part of the broader intervention strategy by government to rapidly speed up vaccination in the country. As NEHAWU, we fully support this initiative by government to ramp up vaccination amongst our people. In the first Vooma vaccination weekend drive held in October, we noticed a significant boost in the uptake of vaccines with over 350 000 vaccines administered.

The number of fully vaccinated people in the country currently stands at 13 million translating to 22% of the population. However, this is not enough, if we are to overcome this pandemic. There must be an acceleration of the vaccination roll-out program to our people and this Vooma vaccination drive is an important step in that regard, especially when there’s an imminent fourth wave of COVID-19.

We reiterate our call for the government to immediately employ more healthcare workers especially Community Health Workers (CWHs) who will play an instrumental role in the vaccination rollout program to ensure vaccines go to people as oppose to people going to vaccine.

Equally, as NEHAWU, we call upon government to drive a comprehensive educational awareness program about the safety of vaccines to deal with the vaccine hesitancy that is prevalent amongst our people. The government needs to reinforce a clear and consistent message that these vaccines provide protection against severe illness, death, hospitalisation and this is evident with the decline in cases of hospitalisation and deaths in our country. 

NEHAWU further welcomes the announcement by government to provide healthcare workers with a booster jab of the J&J vaccine. This is a welcomed intervention that will certainly go a long way in the efforts against the pandemic especially for frontline workers. In this regard, we and encourage all frontline workers to take the booster jab to protect and save their lives.

Lastly, we call on our people to continue adhering to COVID-19 health protocols at all material times. We call our people to continue wearing masks, sanitise their hands and to observe social distancing.

END

Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat

Zola Saphetha (General Secretary) at 082 558 5968; December Mavuso (Deputy General Secretary) at 082 558 5969; Lwazi Nkolonzi (NEHAWU Acting National Spokesperson) at 081 558 2335 or email: lwazin@nehawu.org.za