Dr Kwame Amponsah Achiano, Programmes Manager of Expanded Programmes on Immunization at Ghana Health Service, has disclosed that to date, Ghana has taken delivery of approximately 8.23 million vaccines.
According to him, the Service has received some “substantial quantities of vaccines” in terms of number of doses. Mr Achiano explains that GHS last month were even at the airport to take delivery of some additional vaccines.
“To date we’ve taken delivery of about 8.23 million and we’ve originally distributed approximately 4 million. Quite recently, we are distributing the rest, the ones that we have received. I would say that the vaccine receipt would have improved around the past two [to] three weeks. That’s when we had a lot of influx of vaccines and so even though I’m talking 8 million, most of the vaccines were received just about four weeks coming”.
Dr Kwame Amponsah Achiano
Highlighting the varieties of vaccines the country has taken stock of since the beginning of the year, Mr Achiano revealed that it has received “a combination of them”. He noted that the AstraZeneca vaccine has taken about half of the “entire consignment” delivered.
“It’s [AstraZeneca] about 50-53% of all the vaccines we’ve received. We’ve also received some substantial quantities of Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer [and] Moderna and we’ve distributed these on paper. We are in touch with the regions [and] we have a roadmap for deployment and it is region specific, because every region has their own peculiarity based on our past experiences. We are searching [for] Sputnik which we just had about 21, 000”.
D Dr Kwame Amponsah Achiano
Roadmap to vaccinating 20 million persons
Commenting on progress made so far towards attaining the 20 million inoculation milestone, Mr Achiano emphasized that the success and fruition of the President’s vision “depends on us”. He explained that the country initially was struggling to get the vaccines, even with enough funds to buy. However, we currently have a stockpile of vaccines and is accessible to persons interested in being vaccinated.
“The vaccines landscape has changed, we have quite some substantial quantities. At the time when we started in March, high level management made lots of attempts to even purchase vaccines [and] they were not getting vaccines to buy. But we knew around October, all those vaccines that are being reserved in some other major countries will be released.
Dr Kwame Amponsah Achiano
Commenting on the willingness of persons to get vaccinated and work undertaken by the Service to ensure people get involved, Mr Achiano intimated that it is all about “communicating risks” in terms of the benefits against the risks.
“Of course, there’s no vaccine or medicine which is 100% efficacious and safe. In this dispensation of our activity towards preventing COVID, it’s about communicating risk. People think that COVID is gone… Last year around this time, we had come out of the second wave and gradually people were reverting to their normal means of life and then we were taken by surprise”.
Dr Kwame Amponsah Achiano
The programmes manager of EPI in expounding on why willingness of persons to get vaccinated has waned, he explained that when people perceive cases are going down, they “change their behaviour”.
“But I tell you that the best time to fight an outbreak of a disease is when you have no cases at all. This is the time we do a lot more of the vaccination so that we prevent a fourth wave. Again, there are some countries who are already in the fourth wave and we don’t want to join them”.
Dr Kwame Amponsah Achiano
