Serious Adverse Events and Fatal Outcomes Following COVID-19 Vaccination in the UK: Lessons for Other Countries

Vaccines have taken the centre stage in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic, and in reducing hospitalisation and associated mortality. Countries around the world are heavily dependent on the successful rollout of their vaccination programmes to open up the societies and re-start their economies. However, the success of any vaccine programme, to a large extent, depends upon the efficacy and safety of the vaccines. Given that UK has been way ahead in vaccinating its population, is considered a successful model compared to other countries in Europe and elsewhere and has a yellow card reporting system for adverse events, we use UK as an example to understand the side effects and fatal outcomes following vaccinations. Our results show that AstraZeneca seems to be underperforming in terms of overall reporting of minor adverse events, serious incidents and fatal outcomes following vaccination. The risk of serious anaphylactic reaction and fatal outcome was 1.36 and 1.17 times more in case of AstraZeneca vaccine when compared with Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. The analysis has implications for vaccine policies and programmes both at nation-state and global levels.

Local democracy and public accountability in Uganda: The need for organisational learning

The paper examines the impact of public accountability mechanisms in the Uganda's decentralisation local governments. Some of the common tools used for evaluation of local government performance have been presented and discussed including the baraza, village participatory democracy and the score-card reporting method. The orthodox theories of local governance and concept of democracy are bases for assessing the feasibility of public accountability in Uganda. The conclusions of the paper points to inefficiencies are the universal applicability of the concept of local democracy leading to a suggestion of new mechanisms of public accountability that emerge from organisational learning.