Zimbabwe has joined other African countries in launching vaccination programs against COVID-19.

A total of 200,000 Sinopharm vaccine doses have been donated by China into the country. The country aims to vaccinate 10 million people across Zimbabwe by the end of the year 2021, which in total is about 60% of the population of the country. The Zimbabwean government is also looking at bringing more vaccines into the country from Russia, China and the Global Vaccine Alliance.

Although there was a protest in the country by health workers for some sort of safety measures to be taken, not everyone is keen and willing to take the vaccine so questions remain about how effective it is against the newly made variant virus. Human rights lawyers are concerned that the government might be doing research and collecting data for medical purposes through the vaccination program.

Andrew Makoni, a Zimbabwean human rights lawyer says “you cannot have individuals being subjected to scientific experiments without their informed consent, so we were worried that the first group of people to go through the vaccination were an experiment without being informed that that is what is happening.”

Rufaro Sihle Muyanga.