The Minister-Designate for Health, Mr Kwaku Agyemang Manu has indicated that vaccination is not a new thing in Ghana, hence Ghanaians should submit themselves to the Covid-19 vaccines that would be administered in the country soon.
He emphatically stated that Ghana has some success stories to tell when it comes to administering vaccines to children.
He observed that diseases such as Measles, Poliomyelitis , Tetanus and others have all been prevented from endangering the lives of children through the administering of vaccines, so vaccination should not be a new thing for Ghanaians.
“Vaccination is not a new thing in the world and in Ghana. Those of us who are a bit elderly, when we were young, if you pick about ten young people, you will see some scars on their hand. Those days they were not using syringes to administer vaccines as it is now; they were using knives, guns…so we have had vaccines so many years back. At least I am close to 70, so 70 years ago we were taking vaccines.
“Luckily, in Ghana, we have success stories to tell with the vaccination of children; Measles, Tetanus, Polio, all those things. We have used vaccines to try to overcome them. So now vaccines shouldn’t be a new thing for us.
“If we are able to go round the country and vaccinate everybody, we believe our problem with Covid-19 will begin to go down and down and down.”
The Minister made these comments at a Ministry of Information engagement to educate Ghanaians on the “Covid-19 Vaccination Rollout Plan” last Friday in Accra.
Some key speakers who joined the Health Minister-Designate were; Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, Director-General of Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Kwame Amponsa-Achiano, Programs Manager, Expanded Program on Immunisation, GHS and Dr Yaw Bediako, Immunologist, University of Ghana.
Throwing more light on the need to vaccinate every Ghanaian, the Minister said that a lot of things were done to fight the Covid-19 battle, including the protocols that we observed, but
unfortunately there is a second wave and the number of deaths and active cases keep increasing, hence the immunisation.
He said vaccination is for prevention so that one doesn’t get infected or even if one gets infected, its severity will be minimal and that every Ghanaian must present him/herself for the exercise.
Dr Yaw Bediako on his part dispelled the myth about Covid-19 being engineered to harm Africans.
He indicated that several countries are using the vaccine and these are the same that are going to be used in Ghana, so the myth that these vaccines have been engineered to harm Africans is completely flawed.
He also revealed that 188 million vaccines have been administered in addition to the trial ones and there are African descents in Europe and America who are part of this figure and have had no adverse reactions so there is no cause for alarm.
“The vaccine is working and there is no need to be afraid of anything. We are late in getting it so we should be clamouring to get it and not worry about such myths”, he said
Dr Amponsa-Achiano also revealed at the function that the deployment will be done in three phases. He indicated that phase one will consist of frontline health workers, frontline security personnel, persons with known underlying medical conditions, people who are 60 years and above, frontline members of the Executive, Legislature and the Judiciary, since the country has to be manned.
Phase two will consist of other essential service providers such as the rest of the security agencies, Water, electricity, teachers, students, fuel attendants, farmers and those in the food chain, telecommunication services, traffic control, civil aviation, meteo, air transport services, waste management, media and commercial transport service providers.
Phase three will consist of the rest of the general population; all person’s 18 years and over.
He added that due to the severity of the disease in some regions of Ghana, the segmentation was also done on regional basis. He said Greater Accra, Greater Kumasi Metro and Western region will be the first regions to receive the vaccines before the other regions.
He, however, indicated that the vaccines will not be administered to pregnant women and children for now.
The post Gov’t woos Ghanaians to vaccinate against Covid-19 appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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