A Rwandan firm, Gold Capital Investments has donated funds to procure Covid-19 Vaccines for 1000 nurses in public Hospitals in Kigali. The company donated $ 10,000 to the Ministry of Health to contribute to the Covid-19 vaccination efforts which are currently underway. Gold Capital Investments is involved in sectors such as real estate. To vaccinate 60 per cent of Rwanda’s population, it is estimated that the government will need $124M, according to Rwanda Biomedical Council. According to Dennis Karera, the Chairperson of Gold Capital Investments, the firm took the initiative as an intervention to support the country resume normalcy by availing funds for the procurement of vaccines for front-line health care workers, nurses. The group has since handed a $10,000 cheque to the Ministry of Health. “We decided to take the lead and support the initiative. We need a healthy population. As long as the population is not healthy, our businesses does not make much sense. We have identified this as a key challenge and not much can resume normalcy when we are not vaccinated,” Karera said. He said that they identified nurses as front line workers who are highly exposed to the pandemic and have to be present at their work stations. Karera called on other members of the business community, investor groups, civil society actors and others to consider involvement in supporting initiatives to procure vaccines that will lead to the saving of lives. He said that by pooling together small and large efforts of a range of players, a significant section of the population will be vaccinated and government will be in a better position to scale up the process faster. “Any contributions and roles by different stakeholders in the community will go a long way to increasing the number of people vaccinated in the country. Together we can,” he said. Josephine Murekezi Head of Nurses in Rwanda welcomed the development saying it serves as motivation to nurses in the country who are on the frontline during the pandemic. She said that as some of the most exposed people to the pandemic, the contribution to avail the vaccine will go a long way to protect healthcare workers. The government has been in past weeks making necessary preparation to receive and distribute vaccines across the country. The vaccines among other things require a complex transport mechanism as they require minus seventy degrees Celsius as a storage condition. Rwandan recently purchased five freezers that can go up to minus eighty degrees. Of the $124M required to vaccinate 60 per cent of the population, the funds will go into procurement of vaccines and other logistics like operations and other medical elements. The two-year plan will be targeting getting this vaccine to about 8 million people.
