The world wants to learn from Ghana’s excellent delivery of COVID-19 vaccines – EPI

Ghana’s Programmes Manager for the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI), Kwame Amponsa-Akyianu has revealed that the world is seeking to learn from Ghana in the administering of COVID-19 vaccines.

Happyghana.com reported he shared that many countries have praised Ghana for its excellent delivery of the COVID-19 vaccines.

Dr. Amponsa-Akyianu, however, lamented that Ghanaians and the media continue to chastise them even after their hard work in administering the vaccines.

Speaking to Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show, Dr. Amponsa-Akyianu expressed: “We did our best to distribute those vaccines and vaccinate within Easter and the world is even lauding us for that so it is only in Ghana that they chastise us. If you read around, you will know that Ghana is leading in vaccine delivery. For all those who got vaccines from the COVAX facility, as at the time that we had done 500,000 vaccines, some people had done a meagre 20,000 and everybody and the whole world comes to us asking us what has been our strategy. So, we must be commended because we have done very well”.

The Programmes Manager’s comment come after news circulated that some COVID-19 vaccines had expired in the Northern Region.

Dr. Amponsa-Akyianu explained that in his books, all vaccines were distributed before the expiry date and considering the number of expired vaccines, Ghana should not be worried about these few number of vaccines expiring.

According to him, these vaccines are included in the vaccines that go waste and that does not even amount to 5 percent of the total vaccines.

“We are not worried about the expiry because when we talk about vaccine wastage all those things are included; broken bottles, spillage, expired and all that. If we are able to achieve less than 5 percent then we are good to go. That is the standard. But for us, it was far less than 2 percent so we are not bothered”, he stated.

Background

About a week ago, it was reported that about 480 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines delivered to the Northern Regional Health Directorate had gone waste due to the Directorate’s inability to exhaust its supply of vaccines at the close of the vaccination exercise on Tuesday, April 13, 2021.

The vaccines were to expire on Friday, April, 16 but the Directorate decided to end the vaccination exercise as a precautionary measure on the advice of the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA).