AMPATHPlus Supports Vaccine Efforts

The USAID-supported AMPATHPlus program helped scale up Kenya’s COVID vaccination efforts through a series of trainings and outreach as well as providing support for COVID home-based care and isolation centers.   

Vaccine outreach

In partnership with Kakamega County, AMPATHPlus supported vaccine training for 180 healthcare workers. Kenya received four brands of COVID-19 vaccines including Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna. These vaccines have different mechanisms of administration and requirements for storage so additional training of health care workers was needed to increase the pool of healthcare workers to operate scaled up vaccination sites.

Working with the Kakamega County Ministry of Health team, USAID’s AMPATHPlus then supported a team of vaccinators and health records information officers in 12 sub-counties for a week of outreach to scale up COVID -19 vaccination uptake. The outreach was aimed at increasing access to vaccines beyond the static vaccination sites to help meet the national targets for vaccination. The outreach also helped to reduce vaccine waste due to short expiration of some of the vaccines and the need to have a minimum number of vaccination beneficiaries before they are released from the cold chain. The department of health promotion was supported to move around the communities and deliver COVID specific messages. A COVID-19 sensitization and training was also provided to 30 people with visual and hearing disabilities in Mumias West sub-county.

USAID’s AMPATHPlus also trained a team of 80 health managers from 12 sub-counties and the county health management teams on Adverse Events Following Immunization/vaccination (AEFI). The Kenyan government through the Pharmacy and Poisons Board collects this information on a continuous basis. The goal of the AEFI training was placing key managers from the sub-counties at a vantage point to monitor and report adverse events following vaccination. 

AMPATHPlus also supported the county and sub-county Health Management Team/Rapid Response Team members to carry out support supervision at the two isolation centers in Kakamega County. AMPATHPlus supported three sub-counties to carry out home-based care for patients with COVID-19 who were stable with symptoms that could be managed at home.

In Busia County, USAID’s AMPATHPlus partnered with the Ministry of Health and other organizations to fund the launch of an accelerated Covid-19 vaccination outreach. The county aims to scale up the uptake of the vaccine by the members of the public utilizing mobile outreach services in high potential areas for mass vaccinations. The outreach was timely as USAID and its implementing partners supported the government’s effort to hit a target of 5.8 million vaccinations issued by Mashujaa Day.

In West Pokot County, USAID’s AMPATHPlus joined the Ministry of Health to mark the annual global hand-washing day with a washing ceremony involving 1,200 pupils and community members. Participants benefitted from proper hand-washing technique demonstrations and messages on sanitation and hygiene.

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have dropped dramatically over the last several weeks, and the national curfew has been lifted. As of October 29, more than 253,000 cases of COVID have been confirmed in Kenya. More than 3.5 million people have received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine and 5.5% of the population is fully vaccinated.

Community health workers receive COVID-19 training.