Arthur Greene
Last week, South Africa’s newest train pulled into Port Elizabeth Swartkops station.
But this was no ordinary Transnet service.
The Transvaco is a moving Covid-19 vaccine and information centre, transporting jabs to the poorest parts of the country.
The state-of-art locomotive pulled into the Eastern Cape town carrying a team of doctors and nurses, and exactly 108,000 doses of the vaccine.
Locals have been invited onboard to get their dose or to ask any questions they might have about the vaccine – no ticket required!
The program was launched to tackle two of the government’s biggest challenges: to get vaccines out to rural areas where health care facilities are limited, and to provide information to those who have their doubts about the vaccine.
“Educators take the time to comfort them,” Shamona Kandia, the Transvaco project manager, told the Daily Maverick. “We have nurses who ask: what are you afraid of, what is your fear?
“People leave here comforted. We send them away protected,” she said.
The nine-coach train contains a vaccine centre and a consultation room, but it also has a dining car, a tent for those who can’t walk up the stairs, and a collection of ultra-cold freezers which can store the Pfizer vaccine.
It also has a converted railway police car which still has a little jail. “But we use it for storage,” Kandia laughed.
In the canteen, one can find the familiar faces of soccer legends Fani Madida and Linda Buthelezi, who are travelling with the team to encourage people to get vaccinated.
“They have a powerful presence and voice, two of our soccer legends of South Africa. Men listen to them. The message they have is simple: we have to protect our loved ones. That is what this vaccine train is all about,” Kandia said.
But everywhere that this train stops, its team will get a little bigger.
“We have unemployed nurses and a huge contingent of unemployed youth in South Africa. Wherever we go we recruit from the local environment,” Kandia explained.
Dr. Paballo Mokwana, the train program’s manager, said medical personnel had vaccinated almost 1,000 people so far during the stop in Swartkops.
Image source: @KayaON959
