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Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, GHS Director General
The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, has launched the second National COVID-19 mass vaccination campaign with a caution that the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet over.
The move, he said, forms government’s efforts to help boost the national vaccination drive.
Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, who launched the campaign in Somanya in the Yilo Krobo Municipality in the Eastern Region, advised the people not to shirk the safety measures in the face of eased restrictions until the battle was completely won.
“We need to completely win this fight, and it is in view of this that we have gathered here to roll out series of vaccinations against COVID-19,” Dr Aboagye stressed.
The exercise is on the theme “Protect yourself, protect your family, get vaccinated against COVID-19”.
Vaccine types
He said, currently, five COVID-19 vaccine types have been authorised for use by the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), namely AstraZeneca, Sputnik-V, Pfizer BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye pointed out that as of last week Monday, the country had received over 30 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, and distributed most of them to all regions and districts.
He said to ensure that the vaccines remained safe as they were being deployed, the country had strengthened its robust vaccine safety monitoring system that was being managed by the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) with the support of the GHS’ Expanded Programme on Immunisation.
To ensure real-time management, Dr Kuma-Aboagye said the GHS had deployed a well-integrated information technology and data management system that ensured successful vaccine distribution, tracking, monitoring, and reporting in near-real time.
Support
The GHS Director General said with the support from partners, the service was ardently working to ensure all paper-based data were uploaded electronically for easy retrieval and use for decision making.
“Vaccine and cold chain management were critical for a successful immunisation activity and in view of that, the government, with support from the World Bank, the Government of Japan and other partners, had supported the GHS with ultra-low freezers to store Pfizer vaccines to enhance the COVID-19 vaccine deployment,” he stated.
For his part, the Eastern Regional Minister, Seth Kwame Acheampong, commended the Ministry of Health, GHS and all other stakeholders for their dedicated service to the nation to ensure that we all survived the pandemic since it struck.
“We still have the pandemic with us as a country and therefore, I plead with municipal and district chief executives, religious and opinion leaders not forgetting the media to support all the efforts by the health workers to ensure that we are safe through vaccination,’’ he added.