Officials of institutions and development partners in a group photo after the launch
The Ghana Health Service (GHS), Ministry of Health (MoH) and its development partners have launched the national Covid-19 vaccine roll-out campaign with a target of administering 2.5 million vaccine doses within five days.
The campaign tagged, “Operation 2.5 million does in 5 days” scheduled to take place between February 2 to 6, 2022, is aimed at reaching the over 13 million eligible persons across the country that are still unvaccinated.
Deputy Minister of Health, Tina Mensah, who launched the campaign, said it would help boost Covid-19 vaccine coverage among the population.
She said the health service has through the support of bilateral and multilateral agreement including the COVAX facility, received substantial quantities of vaccines to fight the pandemic.
“Currently, Ghana is rolling out vaccination exercises among the general public; and by the National Immunisation Technical Group’s (NITAG) recommendations, the vaccination exercise has been expanded to include persons who are 15 years and above; as well as pregnant women,” she added.
Furthermore, she said with support from partners, the GHS has expanded its cold chain facilities to ensure that the vaccines are safely kept, including support on ultra-negative freezers to store Pfizer vaccines.
“Working with FDA, we have strengthened and made robust adverse events monitoring system to ensure vaccine safety for the population. This will also help us to respond to the concerns of vaccine safety raised by the population,” she added with a call for all unvaccinated eligible persons to get their shots.
Head of Expanded Programme on Immunisation, Dr. Kwame Amponsa-Achaino giving an overview of the vaccine roll-out said the GHS has an overall objective of vaccinating 2O per cent of the unvaccinated population within two weeks.
He said currently, a total of 10,112,997 Covid-19 vaccine doses have been administered out of which 7,262,928 representing 36.3 per cent of the 20 million target population have received at least one shot.
Dr. Amponsa-Achiano said 3,594,345 representing 18 per cent of the target population are fully vaccinated and 1,468 persons have received a booster shot.
“Initial target to be fully vaccinated was missed as only 50 per cent had received at least one dose and only about 15 per cent were fully vaccinated by December 31, 2021,” he said.
With the present vaccination figures, he said, the institution of vaccination days akin to that of immunisation days for polio is an important and critical step to reducing hesitancy and improve vaccine uptake towards achieving the initial target of 20 million persons fully vaccinated by mid 2022.
Director General of the GHS, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye said 600,000 vaccination teams would be deployed with 1,500 supervisors simultaneously across the country with strategies including static, intensified outreach, mobile and out camps to ensure visibility of the teams tasked to vaccinate 85 persons a day
He reiterated it was important for all to commit to working towards the achievement of the vaccination targets.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri