The Director-general of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, has advised individuals who have been vaccinated with AstraZeneca not to get inoculated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

According to him, the Service does not have adequate evidence on the safety of mixing vaccines. As such, these persons stand the chance of putting their lives at risk.

Therefore, Dr Kuma-Aboagye cautioned that persons who have received jabs of the AstraZeneca vaccines not to take any of the Johnson & Johnson jabs.

“We have a mechanism of checking on how we ensure that we are giving to those who are qualified.

“I believe that if someone’s intention is to cheat, by telling them how we intend to check will make it difficult for us to check. But we don’t have enough evidence for the safety of mixing vaccines and in terms of what benefits you get”.
Dr Kuma-Aboagy

Procurement of 16.9 million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccines

Dr Kuma- Aboagye further revealed that government has made provisions for the procurement of some 16.9 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccines which would be received in batches.

Ghana took delivery of 177,600 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on August 7 as part of the first batch of the Africa Union’s African Vaccine Acquisition Trust (AVAT).

“This is just the first of many tranches that will be coming in. This is a vaccine that is being shared across the world. We know that for the J & J, our stock of what we have secured is about 16.9 million doses.

“They’d be coming from time to time and very soon we’d get a few more tranches”.
Dr Kuma-Aboagy

Additionally, the GHS Director-General further hinted that government would take delivery of AstraZeneca vaccines early September.

“Early next month, we will have AstraZeneca for the second dose. The time does not depend only on the Ghana Health Service but it depends on the supplier, availability of transportation to bring it in here.”

“When all those things are put in place, we’d get to know the date of arrival. We should have AstraZeneca next month”.
Dr Kuma-Aboagy

Launch of GHS website

The Ghana Health Service on Friday, August 13, 2021, launched a new website aimed at giving it higher visibility. Also, the website is intended to make its operations more efficient.

Commenting on the website, Dr Kuma-Aboagye revealed that the Ghana Health Service has always had a website but “we realized that it was not fit for purpose”.

“The last few months we’ve been working on updating the website; getting a new website also ensuring that our social media platforms are all included, including all the Covid platforms.

“We have also established websites within the new website for the regions so that they can also manage their website, share information, communicate all their works to other people and that will increase our visibility.

“This website, www.ghs.gov.gh, is more interactive. It has all our social media handles all linked up to it and then we have also formed a special team that will continuously be updating the website with new information”.
Dr Kuma-Aboagy