It began with a tweet on the social network Twitter (now X) in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. In 280 characters they offered a first mapping of COVID-19 infections at the national level. The exercise showed a gap, there was no official data available to everyone.
This is how the COVID-19 Vaccination Atlas in Guatemalaa website that studies the evolution of the disease and the care that the population received through vaccines that compiles more than 1,200 maps.
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It is a project that Data Laboratory Together with Oxfam, they were generated to estimate the coverage and vaccination capacity of health posts, as well as the barriers and inequality in access to these services by the population.
“We were a group of people concerned about sharing our analysis and expertise with citizens, we published the first dashboard in April 2020”says analyst Óscar Chávez, now executive director of Laboratorio de Data.
He continued the publications on social networks in a clear way, in words so that anyone without being a data specialist could find out about the number of cases and deaths. The publications were fed with requests for access to public information. The Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance (MSPAS) created the COVID-19 dashboard three months later, a site that currently compiles official information.
Guide to exploring the Atlas
The maps were divided into national, departmental and municipal. The national ones have the incidence of cases by quarter from 2020 to 2022. The location of the vaccination posts and information on the number of people vaccinated at each one.
Departmental and municipal help disaggregate information by location to find it easily. It also links this information to the Guatemalan road network to know how accessible the vaccination centers were.
At the close of this note, Guatemala managed to cover 41% of the population with the complete scheme.
In the study The Vaccination Atlas The inequality of criteria for locating vaccination centers was identified. While zone 15 was the area of the city with the most private vaccination posts, with six, none were registered in zones 4, 14, 19 and 25. More than 48 thousand people reside in the last two areas alone. On the other hand, zone 21 with 80 thousand neighbors only had one vaccination post.
“This asymmetric distribution generated territories without coverage, creating high concentrations of people who had to travel to the other authorized positions”cites the study.
Roof
Karin Slowing, project director of the Data Laboratory, mentions that the coverage would have been much lower if there had not been support from universities and the private sector.
“It is very important to recognize these actors and the role they played, the ministry could not do it alone. It is not a criticism, but a reality and an institutional weakness and that is why the entire society had to join in. Without them, vaccination rates would be worse”he assures.
Vaccination in Guatemala was carried out mainly in public spaces such as municipal halls, IGSS hospitals and clinics, schools and universities.
Although these maps exclusively address the COVID-19 issue, Chávez suggests that the Government can use the same methodology to measure the schedule of other immunizations in children and adults.
The data is public and easily accessible in the Atlas. Documenting the pandemic prepares future generations in case they face another disease on a global scale.
In May of this year, the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus, warned governments to prepare because a new pathogen could cause another health emergency. That’s what the Atlas is for.
*This publication is part of the project “Vaccination gaps against COVID-19 in Guatemala” by Data Laboratory and Oxfam Central America. [Por Mariajosé España. Vía Por Mariajosé España]
