Poor power supply: WHO excludes Nigeria from countries to receive free COVID-19's vaccine

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has excluded Nigeria from countries entitle to free  Covid-19 vaccines due to poor electricity supply.

The organisation signed a COVAX deal with manufacturers of the vaccines to make it available to poorer nations at a subsidised rate or for free.

However, with constant power supply needed to store the vaccine which may not be possible in Nigeria due to erratic power supply, the organisation has now cut the supply to Nigeria to avoid wastage of the vaccines.

The global health agency on Thursday disclosed that the country fell short of its criteria to benefit from the scheme, which includes the ability to keep the vaccines frozen. Africa’s largest economy would, therefore, not be getting supplies until WHO’s requirements have been fully met to avoid vaccine loss or damages.

Nigerian authorities had been reliant on handouts from the WHO-funded COVAX programme, anticipating the delivery of a shipment of 100,000 Pfizer jabs last month.

Following stalled arrival of the vaccines, administration officials had blamed “politics” and "logistics due to no fault of Nigeria” for the delay.

Humanitarian information portal ReliefWeb reported WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, to have said at a virtual press briefing Thursday that only Cape Verde, Rwanda, South Africa and Tunisia were qualified to take delivery of the inoculation, out of 13 countries that applied from the continent.

Ms. Moeti hinged the suspension of Nigeria and eight other African nations on inadequate storage facilities, which she said, posed a high propensity for wastage of the jabs.

"This vaccine has received WHO Emergency Use Listing but requires countries to be able to store and distribute doses at minus 70 degrees Celsius," she noted.

The WHO official added: "Regulatory processes, cold chain systems and distribution plans need to be in place to ensure vaccines are safely expedited from ports of entry to delivery. We can’t afford to waste a single dose."

The country's which has been battling unstable power supply for decades has not been straight forward in term of its readiness to accommodate the vaccines.

While the Minister of State for Health, Adeleke Mamora, had recently told Bloomberg that Nigeria was yet to make purchases for COVID-19 vaccines, President Muhammadu Buhari administration had repeatedly assured that Nigeria had secured adequate storage facilities to preserve the long-expected Pfizer vaccines while describing contrary assertions from medical experts as false.

The new development by WHO will now be a setback to the country which has been experiencing a surge in the number of the virus across the 36 states and the FCT.