UNDP Nepal & WHO Nepal Supported MoHP Online Vaccine Registration Amounts to…NOTHING

READING TIME: 5 minutes

Under the circumstances, there is just ONE thing that we as a country can and must get right: vaccinate as many of the people as fast as we can.

We are at this juncture in these trying times of the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic because the Government of Nepal has failed utterly and miserably to fight the pandemic in any meaningful manner. We have had absolutely NO strategy from when it started last year. The first wave peaked in October with more corrupt activities than mitigation and containment activities, apart from a lockdown ending in July. We did a worse job at tackling the second wave which peaked in May this year.

In spite of the toll it has taken — not just lives, directly and indirectly, but also on daily lives — the Government of Nepal continue to just stumble along making ad hoc decisions etc. The ONLY ray of hope at saving the lives of as many people as possible — for now anyway — rests in innoculating the population, and by some miracle attaining herd immunity!

Even then, when I learned about an initiative to that end — the Minister of Health and Population’s initative to facilitate the COVID-19 vaccination campaign using an online registration process — of course I was sceptical and so didn’t register immediately. Sure enough the site hadn’t been secure and the information submitted was readily accessibly to hackers.

But once that had been sorted out, I went ahead and registered myself and every single one of my family member…except my little nephew. I duly registered hoping against hope that they’ll amount to something during these unprecedented and dire times of the coronavirus pandemic. Yes, I did in spite of the fact that this is a Nepal government’s initiative AND in spite of what point 5 in the note at the top of the page said (see the underline bit in the image below).

As a matter of fact, discovering an issue on the online form, I even tweeted about it.

That initiative, unfortunately, was also NOT be what it portended to be! Worse still, I discovered that this failed initiative had been supported by UNDP Nepal and The WHO Nepal!

Regardless, I discovered all my efforts at registering online had been for NOUGHT when I went for my Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine on July 19!

The following day, I made a point of tweeting a two-tweet thread about it. In the first tweet, I compared registering for the vaccine online to the crosswalk (zebra crossing) marking on a narrow street that I passed on the way to and from the vaccination site.

A QR code appeared where the black rectangle appears on the right hand side of the digital registration card you see above.

On July 24, I added another tweet to the thread with somethig I had just discovered — that the 18-50 year olds have been asked to show up at the vaccination centers with their registration numbers. I rounded off the tweet by half-jokingly asking, “They figured out a way to use d technology?”

And on July 26, another one with also something new I had discovered about the online registration: an article detailing the fiasco of the online registrations.

According to the article, the efforts has amounted to just being “given a number” and noted that “nothing has happened since.”

On July 27 is I learned that UNDP Nepal and The WHO Nepal’s involvement from a tweet by no other than Sara Beysolow Nyanti, the United Nations Resident Coordinator herself, declaring so (see image below).

Curious to find out what they would have to say about what I had discovered, I responded to the above tweet asking them “how that will help?” when the day I got my own vaccine “I showed them my digital registration card (see image), but they did NOTHING with that information.”

I reinforced that tweet with the following tweet, linking to The Kathmandu Post article. I even asked, “Can one of you (@UNDPNepal @WHONepal @NyantiSara) tell us what was supposed to have happened?”

Sadly, NO one — not the UN Coordinator, NOT UNDP, NOT WHO — responded with any information.

Two days later, on July 29, I tried one more time. I tweeted the following tagging all three.

Again, I received NO response!

So, it looks like I will never know the level and extent of UNDP Nepal and WHO Nepal’s involvement in the fiasco that online registration for COVID-19 vaccine is. This, however, is only one of the many ways the Governmet of Nepal has failed the people in their vaccination campaign, the only ray of hope for many in our fight against this unseen foe!

But then again, in Nepal, human lives, especially those of the ordinary have little to no value, which has been more than amply demonstrated, beyond doubt, during these trying and unprecedented times of the coronavirus pandemic.

What do you think?

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