The Uganda Vaccines Monitoring and Transparency project envisaged a more informed, and empowered, civil society, with greater citizen participation in Uganda’s Covid19 vaccination programme. The project aimed at: increasing awareness and access to Covid-19 vaccination information to facilitate third-party monitoring and reporting; increasing citizen participation in Covid-19 vaccination programme by countering conspiracy theories, public fears and negative perceptions; and improving equity, efficiency and effectiveness in the Covid-19 vaccination program.

Activity 1: Work with health workers at two selected health facilities to monitor vaccine distribution and submit weekly reports on the same: ACCU will identify at least 6 health workers at two health centres (Kasangati HCIV and another facility to be selected later) to train on monitoring the distribution of Covid19 vaccines. The trained health workers will provide weekly reports on vaccine deliveries, issues of prioritisation and equity in vaccination, side effect and challenges faced in the process.

Activity 2: Access official information related to Covid19 vaccination to facilitate monitoring and flagging of discrepancies and red flags: Requests will be made to the Ministry of Health and other government agencies for official information related to Covid19 vaccinations including procurements, prioritisation, delivery schedules, etc. This information will be used for monitoring purposes and engagements with duty bearers. ACCU will mostly look out for and flag discrepancies in received information and actual implementation.

Activity 3: Conduct a survey to gather community perceptions, fears and opinions on vaccination and share the findings with key policy makers and implementers: A questionnaire will be designed and used to gather citizen perceptions and fears towards Covid19 vaccination. Results from this survey will then be shared with officials at the Ministry of Health and the Local Governments, to guide community sensitisation campaigns and planning.

Activity 4: Community education at the selected health facilities to counter misinformation and community resistance to vaccination: Using the toolkits acquired from the Ministry of Health, community sensitisation drives will be conducted at health centres. These will be conducted together with the trained health workers to shape community perceptions towards Covid19 inoculation. The sensitisation drive will be conducted at the selected health centres and where possible in communities using the Village Health Teams (VHTs). Fact sheets received from the ministry will be simplified and translated into local languages and disseminated to citizens at the selected health centres. Lastly, targeted messages will be produced and disseminated to citizens using social media sites of Facebook and Twitter. These will also target the citizens, leaders and officials at the health ministry.

Activity 5: Hold duty bearer engagements to flag issues emerging from the survey, citizen reports and reports from health workers: Two engagements will be held with the Ministry of Health and the District Local Government to share gathered findings from the survey, citizen sensitisation and health worker reports. This will go a long way towards addressing the identified challenges and loopholes.