Mobile phone operator Vodafone Samoa will partner with the Ministry of Health to boost its messaging and advocacy to get more citizens to consider COVID-19 vaccination.

The partnership was announced by the Ministry of Health’s Tagaloa Dr Robert Thompsen last Friday during the launching of Vodafone’s More For All Win A Car Promotion. 

He said the Ministry will work with Vodafone to push out community messaging in order to get more people to get their COVID-19 vaccination.

As part of their partnership, Tagaloa revealed that Vodafone will assist the Ministry inform the community through S.M.S. messaging and social media posts as well as provide educational content on the importance of getting vaccinated.

“Also to help educate people about the importance of getting vaccinated, not only for COVID-19 but for other vaccines for infectious diseases,” he said.

Early this year the mobile phone operator and the M.O.H. reached an agreement for support to be provided to the Ministry in terms of community messaging platforms.

Tagaloa indicated that the support from Vodafone is not only for the AstraZeneca vaccine but four new vaccines that will also be introduced into Samoa later this year.

Currently, he said the M.O.H. continues to push on with the rolling out of the COVID-19 vaccination programme and appealed to the public to get inoculated. 

The Ministry hopes that its objective is to get at least 95 per cent vaccination coverage of the country’s population.

Tagaloa then thanked Vodafone for it's support to ensure that their messages can reach the community as they are rolling out the COVID-19 vaccine throughout the whole of Samoa.

Vodafone Samoa Chief Executive Officer, Nofoasaefa Satish Sharma, thanked Tagaloa and added that he considers doctors and nurses as heroes.

“Doctors and nurses are silent workers and heroes, we support the system to ensure people of Samoa are vaccinated not only for COVID but for all the vaccinations as Dr. Robert also mentioned earlier," he said.