{"id":5873,"date":"2021-01-02T06:48:49","date_gmt":"2021-01-02T06:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/?p=5873"},"modified":"2025-11-22T12:12:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T12:12:05","slug":"guinea-begins-covid-19-vaccination-campaign-despite-low-trust-in-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/guinea-begins-covid-19-vaccination-campaign-despite-low-trust-in-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Guinea begins Covid-19 vaccination campaign despite low trust in government"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>By Youssouf Bah<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Wednesday, Guinea became the first West African country to begin its Covid-19 vaccination campaign. It started with a 60-dose pilot trial of Russia&#8217;s Sputnik V vaccine for a select group of government ministers.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Guinea has had 13,722 cases of coronavirus and 81 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. I encourage all Guineans to try this new vaccine,\u201d said Hawa B\u00e9avogui, minister of social affairs.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Beds at Donka Hospital in Conakry are routinely full, as doctors who treated Ebola virus now treat Covid-19 patients. Health workers say the government needs to do more to combat the disease.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIn my opinion, our government doesn\u2019t do enough to educate the public on coronavirus,\u201d said Dr. Aissiatou Sow, a dentist who treats Covid patients in Conakry.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Low trust in government means that some Conakry residents don\u2019t even believe the disease is real. \u201cThere\u2019s no such thing as coronavirus or Covid-19. It doesn\u2019t exist,\u201d proclaimed Nafadima Sidib\u00e9, a food vendor. She said she would not take the Covid-19 vaccine. \u201cHow can you create a vaccine for a disease that doesn\u2019t exist? Those are the ministers! We don\u2019t want anyone here saying they will vaccinate us,\u201d she said.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the reasons behind the low trust in government is President Alpha Cond\u00e9\u2019s repression of the political opposition. This year, Cond\u00e9 overturned the constitution to stay in power for a third term, despite outcry from politicians in Guinea and a few international bodies.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The main opposition party, led by Cellou Dalein Diallo, has not accepted the October 18<sup>th<\/sup> election results that proclaimed Alpha Cond\u00e9 the winner with nearly 60% of the vote. Opposition protests are routinely met with police violence.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Post-election violence has killed at least 12 people according to Human Rights Watch, and Diallo said that Conde had arrested up to 400 of his supporters.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Youssouf Bah On Wednesday, Guinea became the first West African country to begin its Covid-19 vaccination campaign. It started with a 60-dose pilot trial of Russia&#8217;s Sputnik V vaccine for a select group of government ministers. Guinea has had 13,722 cases of coronavirus and 81 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. I encourage [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5875,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,62,65],"tags":[97,85,67,95,96],"class_list":["post-5873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","category-politique","category-security","category-west-africa","tag-alpha-conde","tag-covid-19","tag-elections","tag-guinea","tag-vaccine","post_format-post-format-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5873"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5890,"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5873\/revisions\/5890"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sahelien.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}