The 100,000 euros paid contributed to the strengthening of the vaccination brigades and the purchase of 6 refrigerators to store the doses
SANTANDER, 12 Dec. 2022 (Europe Press) –
The contribution of €100,000 made by the Government of Cantabria in 2021 to promote vaccination against the coronavirus in Bolivia has helped more than 948,000 people from peri-urban and rural populations far from the departments of Cochabamba, La Paz and Pando to receive their doses.
This was revealed by the report presented this Monday, in a press conference, by the Unicef Committee in Cantabria on the impact that this contribution has had.
This money contributed by the Government of Cantabria, through UNICEF, to the Covax mechanism has served, on the one hand, to strengthen the vaccination brigades that have been launched to bring the vaccine to these periurban and rural areas of these departments and ensure the correct development of vaccination campaigns.
And it also served to improve vaccine transport and distribution systems, strengthening the cold chain through refrigerated refrigerators for vaccine maintenance.
Specifically, the money from Cantabria was used to purchase 6 specialized refrigerators for storing vaccines.
Furthermore, as part of the activities carried out within the project, the training of health personnel and the development of communication actions among the population aimed at promoting confidence in vaccination were carried out.
One of the results of the project allowed the department of Cochabamba to position itself as one of the top two departments in the country with the best vaccination coverage.
Of the more than 948,000 people, nearly 551,000 beneficiaries came from the department of La Paz; 376,000 from Cochabamba and nearly 21,300 from Pando.
The presentation of the report was attended, among others, by the president of the Cantabrian Committee of UNICEF, Esperanza Botella, and the general director of cooperation of the regional government, Silvia Abascal.
And the most specific data was presented, via videoconference, by the head of the health area of UNICEF Bolivia, Hugo Razzuri, who valued the contribution made by Cantabria “in one of the most difficult moments”.
He explained that vaccination against Covid began in Bolivia “slowly” in March 2021 and that the pandemic revealed the “deficiencies” that existed in the country’s vaccination programs.
For her part, and beyond this specific project, Rebecka Jonsson, a specialist from UNICEF Spain in global child health, underlined, also by videoconference, that Cantabria’s contribution to health cooperation exceeded 3 million between 2007 and 2020, which represents more than 10% of official regional development assistance allocated to health.
However, the Director General of Cooperation of the Government of Cantabria specified that since then and up to now this percentage has grown to around 18% since, as she explained, there is a growing trend of NGOs to allocate more and more programs to health strengthening.
Furthermore, Abascal highlighted the budget increase in this legislature for development cooperation, an area for which a total of 4.5 million will be allocated in 2023, compared to 2 in 2019.
The Director General of Cooperation stressed that every day the world faces “new challenges and ever faster and more interconnected challenges” and stressed that Covid or the war in Ukraine proves it.
Although he underlined that these affect all countries, he underlined that “not all” can face the consequences, with which, in his opinion, he believes that “strong and stable cooperation is needed now more than ever”.
With this objective, he stressed that the Cantabrian government works to “establish synergies and establish alliances” between institutions to give an “efficient and effective response” to the current crises and the next ones that may come.
Abascal took the opportunity to thank the work done by the Cantabrian Committee of UNICEF. In turn, the president of the Committee thanked the “commitment and collaboration” of the regional executive with the organization.
