The Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service have taken delivery of the first consignment of vaccines for babies.
The vaccines which the Director-General of the GHS, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, led a delegation to receive on the tarmac of the Kotoka International Airport (KIA), on Saturday, March 11, include Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG), Measles-Rubella (MR), and Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV).
“Distribution to various regions and facilities [are] underway,” a post on the Ministry of Information Facebook page said.
“More vaccines expected in Ghana in the coming weeks from multiple sources,” it said.
This comes few days after the sector minister, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, assured the nation on the floor of Parliament about shipment of the vaccines.
“Mr Speaker, it is a very serious public interest issue, the assurance I will give and I can give for the first time in the chamber here is that this will not happen again,” the Dormaa Central Member said on Friday, March 10.
“I will advise that you will help me in my advocacy to get adequate funding for vaccines, even the health insurance budget. So when we meet with committees, they have always been talking about it, and even in the chamber, it has come up that if Parliament approves adequately for us and we always have our budget well we will be able to supply. I assure you that whatever challenges happened I don’t think we are going to face these challenges any longer.
“I can stand here and assure the House that within two weeks or three weeks we will get vaccines, even probably before that. I can’t get my hands on a specific date but probably even before that, we may get the vaccines that we are talking about. Throughout the period we have made $6.4million equivalent to UNICEF who supplies us the vaccines.”
By Vincent Kubi