NAMIBIA’S human rights advocacy organisation, NamRights, says it should be made compulsory for public healthcare workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
In a statement released yesterday, the non-profit organisation, said public health care workers should not be allowed to choose whether to be vaccinated or not.
“It is compulsory that they must be vaccinated first and foremost in the interests of public health,” the statement read.
NamRights argued that if the wearing of masks and other Covid-19 related protocols are compulsory then taking the vaccine should be compulsory as well. Furthermore, the organisation stated that individual basic human rights and freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution always come second to the interests of national security and public health.
The organisation also requested president Hage Geingob, minister of health Kalumbi Shangula, as well as the information ministry, to embark on a civic education and information campaign explaining why it is compulsory to be vaccinated.
“Alternatively, NamRights is solemnly requesting the government to open public vaccination centres countrywide to enable willing citizens to be vaccinated against Covid-19,” the organisation said.
The statement, signed by NamRights founder and executive director Phil ya Nangoloh, warned that the country should not waste the few Covid-19 vaccines donated by the governments of China and India by letting them expire.
“As a nation, we cannot surrender to the nefarious propaganda and other info-demics clearly-sponsored by anti-vaccination and other right-wing groups worldwide that Covid-19 vaccination is intended to kill certain people and, or races,” NamRights said.
NamRights is a private human rights monitoring and advocacy organisation which has consultative status with United Nations and African Union agencies. Sunday’s daily Covid-19 update released by the Ministry of Health and Social Services reported that 4 620 people in Namibia have received the first doses of the vaccine.
