Despite a rocky start and some technical difficulties, Tunisia's health ministry announced on Sunday it had vaccinated more than half a million people — nearly 5% of the population — in the country’s second open-call vaccine drive.
The initiative, launched by President Kais Saied in the days after he seized all political power in the country, came on the heels of a disastrous attempt at handing out jabs at walk-in centres over the Eid al-Adha holiday last month when thousands turned up in the heat for what turned out to be just a few hundred available doses.
The outcry from that ill-fated drive, along with agony over a deadly fourth wave of Covid sweeping Tunisian hospitals and claiming hundreds of lives a day, were driving factors in the July 25 protests that spurred Mr Saied's consolidation.
Early in Sunday’s drive the initiative seemed fated to repeat history.
At a middle school in Mornag, a rural town 40 kilometres south of the capital, hundreds of elderly people crowded in the dusty courtyard waiting in the 34°C heat to be vaccinated. Many had arrived hours earlier, coming from towns and villages in the surrounding mountains. There were no tents or chairs set up at the vaccination centre; dozens of people in their 80s and 90s leaned on canes or younger relatives who had accompanied them.
“They should have learnt from the catastrophe over Eid,” said Saied Chamakh. “This isn’t the operation of someone who has things under control.”
While the crowd grew impatient outside, sweating in the heat, dozens of volunteer nurses, doctors and pharmacists were exasperated inside because they could not administer shots. The internet was down, yet health workers were required to upload each patient's details to the country’s Evax online platform.
“We had a plan to vaccinate 4,600 people here today,” said Mohamed Ali Saiedi, a volunteer scout master with the Tunisian Scouts who was running the vaccine site.
“But we’ve been open more than 90 minutes and have only managed to vaccinate 100 people because of problems with the internet connection.”
Evax proved to be a hurdle for many in trying to get their shot. Dozens of people were turned away for not having a registration number from the online platform and, without smartphones, no way to get one on the spot.
But at centres across the country, resourceful volunteers from youth groups, the Tunisian Scouts, the Red Crescent and others soon took matters into their own hands.
At a vaccine centre in the central coastal city of Sfax, a group of high school pupils sat with patients who had not yet registered on Evax and swiftly filled out forms on their own smartphones for them. Others created Wi-Fi hotspots to provide internet connections.
Hinna Massmoudi, 28, said it just made sense to help get the system flowing. “We’re trying to give out 5,000 shots today,” she said. “If someone hasn’t filled out their forms it is just as easy for us to do it for them.”
After the initial kinks were worked out, and the morning rush died down, things moved smoothly at the centre in Sfax, she said. By 1.30pm they had administered about 950 doses.
Yousef Chakroun, 54, said he only had to wait 15 minutes for his AstraZeneca shot. He said it was the right thing to do: “Keeps us all safe.”
In the capital, nearly 40,000 doses were doled out at dozens of clinics, Tarek ben Naceur, the Tunis regional health director, told The National. "That's more than we can usually administer in an entire week," he said.
Tunisia started vaccinations in March, but the effort was halting, with just 8 per cent of the population vaccinated as of last week. A lack of coordination, limited doses, few staff, and high vaccine hesitancy all contributed to the sluggish effort.
But Sunday’s drive seemed to cut through the problems faced earlier in the campaign.
Prompted by the dire Covid-19 situation in Tunisia, countries including the US and UAE donated millions of vaccine doses in recent weeks.
Nursing and medical students were recruited to volunteer to give shots - a move health experts had been calling for to handle earlier staffing problems when only registered nurses or physicians administer doses.
At the centre in Sfax, Farouk Damak, a 20-year-old nursing student, volunteered to give shots on Sunday after spending months training in the Covid unit at Habib Bourguiba Hospital.
“It’s so hard to see what Covid does to the body,” he said.
His time in the ward deeply shaped his dedication to public health, Mr Damak said, particularly after he lost an 11-year-old boy to Covid in the spring.
“It hits you hard. In our profession you’re there for the extremes of life, birth and death, and it changes you.”
For several days in July, Tunisia led the world in deaths per capita, as hospital wards overflowed and bodies piled up in corridors outside morgues. The dire scenes seemed to have prompted many to overcome their hesitancy and show up for the vaccine on Sunday.
At the centre in Mornag, Najet, 60, said she was finally persuaded to get the vaccine by her son who “was worried about his mother.”
Ahmed Nursutlan, 78, said: “My family encouraged me — it was time.”
In Sfax, Mounira, 49, said after fretting over potential side effects, she decided to take the plunge. After getting her shot, she told The National, “This is a kind of beginning, of finally feeling some peace and not worrying what would happen to my kids if I died and left them alone. I feel a great sense of relief.”
The Bio
Favourite Emirati dish: I have so many because it has a lot of herbs and vegetables. Harees (oats with chicken) is one of them
Favourite place to go to: Dubai Mall because it has lots of sports shops.
Her motivation: My performance because I know that whatever I do, if I put the effort in, I’ll get results
During her free time: I like to drink coffee - a latte no sugar and no flavours. I do not like cold drinks
Pet peeve: That with every meal they give you a fries and Pepsi. That is so unhealthy
Advice to anyone who wants to be an ironman: Go for the goal. If you are consistent, you will get there. With the first one, it might not be what they want but they should start and just do it
The candidates
Dr Ayham Ammora, scientist and business executive
Ali Azeem, business leader
Tony Booth, professor of education
Lord Browne, former BP chief executive
Dr Mohamed El-Erian, economist
Professor Wyn Evans, astrophysicist
Dr Mark Mann, scientist
Gina MIller, anti-Brexit campaigner
Lord Smith, former Cabinet minister
Sandi Toksvig, broadcaster
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Coming soon
Torno Subito by Massimo Bottura
When the W Dubai – The Palm hotel opens at the end of this year, one of the highlights will be Massimo Bottura’s new restaurant, Torno Subito, which promises “to take guests on a journey back to 1960s Italy”. It is the three Michelinstarred chef’s first venture in Dubai and should be every bit as ambitious as you would expect from the man whose restaurant in Italy, Osteria Francescana, was crowned number one in this year’s list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Akira Back Dubai
Another exciting opening at the W Dubai – The Palm hotel is South Korean chef Akira Back’s new restaurant, which will continue to showcase some of the finest Asian food in the world. Back, whose Seoul restaurant, Dosa, won a Michelin star last year, describes his menu as, “an innovative Japanese cuisine prepared with a Korean accent”.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal
The highly experimental chef, whose dishes are as much about spectacle as taste, opens his first restaurant in Dubai next year. Housed at The Royal Atlantis Resort & Residences, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal will feature contemporary twists on recipes that date back to the 1300s, including goats’ milk cheesecake. Always remember with a Blumenthal dish: nothing is quite as it seems.
The biog
Family: He is the youngest of five brothers, of whom two are dentists.
Celebrities he worked on: Fabio Canavaro, Lojain Omran, RedOne, Saber Al Rabai.
Where he works: Liberty Dental Clinic
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
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Company%20profile
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if you go
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
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Bombshell
Director: Jay Roach
Stars: Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, Margot Robbie
Four out of five stars
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
SPECS
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