Ghana COVID Vaccination Update – Western Regional Health Directorate To Take Vaccines To The People- Dr. Gifty Amugi

By Maxwell Nkansah Dr. Gifty Amugi Western Region Deputy Director of Public Health has indicated  that measures are being taken by  the regional health directorate to take vaccination to the population if they don't not come to facilities to be vaccinated. According to Dr. Amugi, only 22% of the targeted population have been vaccinated which is worrying as individuals go about their daily activities unvaccinated thus a threat to the country's health safety. She further encouraged Ghanaians to vaccinate for the betterment of the nation.  “As a nation, we’ve set ourselves a target to vaccinate 20 million people. And currently, we are doing only 2 percent of our eligible population and that is our proposition and that is not good enough. What we are going to do now is that we will be moving out. We will set camp at lorry parks, markets, funerals, and in fact places of mass gathering and do the vaccination. We are also encouraging companies, associations to put themselves together and call us and we will come to wherever they are and do the vaccination. And it is free of charge. We want people to get vaccinated at easy access and also at their convenience.. because Covid-19 is still around” Dr. Gifty however attributed the low rate of vaccination to different ideologies and superstitions about the vaccine; “Some think that the vaccine is going to kill them some years to come, some also say it is related to some religious something. And for others too, they are in communities that have not seen the devastating effects in terms of mortality from Covid-19 yet and so do not really see the need to be vaccinated. As a country, we haven’t experienced any severe conditions or deaths associated with the vaccines. In fact, all the supposed side effects, we are interested in them, so when you get vaccinated and you experience any effect no matter how small it is, you should report it to where you got vaccinated. Get forms and fill and we will investigate. Ghana’s robust COVID-19 vaccination campaign continues to receive a boost with donations through the COVAX Facility. The Ministry of Health has in the past few weeks, taken delivery of more than 2 million doses of AstraZeneca’s Covishield vaccines from the Governments of Germany, Denmark, Iceland, Norway with Germany contributing the largest single consignment of over 1.5 million doses. About 2.73 million doses have been received and 826k people have been fully vaccinated indicating that about 2.7 % of the population is fully vaccinated.