The University of Pretoria’s (UP) Community Oriented Primary Care (OPC) research division joined hands to assist more than 4,000 people, including the homeless, and people living in informal settlements, to get vaccinated.
Director of the Community OPC Research Unit, Prof. Jannie Hugo says that they have been working with the Health Department to help people who are undocumented get their jab.
Professor Hugo says that the Department of Health has been instrumental in making it possible and ensuring that this undocumented cohort is included in Electronic Vaccination Data System (EVDS).
What we do is we give them a health record and a health number which then becomes the identification on the EVDS, so they are part of the EVDS. We do a health check on them and we issue a patient retained health record and we keep all the records in that and then we have a data system
The vaccination initiative started in Tshwane and its surrounding areas, proceeded to Ekurhuleni in Tembisa and is currently operating in Hillbrow, Johannesburg as well as parts of Soweto.
The organisation currently has a few stationery vaccination centres but has been able to arrange a few pop-up sites after negotiating with community members of the affected areas.
Close to 6000 people have so far been vaccinated 60% of whom are undocumented according to the Director. He adds that this is because they are also able to reach people who are documented but had no access for various other reasons.
In terms of working outside Gauteng province, he points that they are also doing extensive work in mining-host communities in six to seven provinces and they have been engaging those provincial health departments in to deploy people in those mining areas.
The UP Community OPC Research Unit says that it is open to working with more organisations as this is a collaborative effort to ensure that these individuals have access to vaccines and access to health care despite their living circumstances.