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Health News for Saturday, February 20, 2021
Source: GNA
2021-02-20
Kwaku Agyemang- Manu, appointed Minister of Health
COVID-19: Mr. Kwaku Agyemang-Manu, the designated Minister of Health, has called on Ghanaians to be ready for coronavirus vaccination in March this year.
“We all need to get vaccinated in this country,” he said.
He said it was not true that the COVID-19 vaccine was developed to kill Africans and that the vaccines to be administered would protect the public against the virus.
The Designated Minister said this on Friday as the Ministry of Health together with the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and the Government of Ghana held a public commitment on the COVID-19 Vaccine Implementation Plan in Accra.
Mr. Agyeman-Manu said that vaccination is not new to the world and that Ghana, for example, has managed to eliminate many diseases through the use of vaccines.
He explained: “This is for prevention so you don’t get infected and even if you do get infected, the severity of the disease will not get out of control.”
Currently, the government has requested two different COVID-19 vaccines; Covishield; the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, manufactured by the Serum Institute in India, and the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, manufactured in Russia.
The two are expected to arrive in the country later this month.
He said that while the nation awaited the start of vaccination, it was paramount that all Ghanaians adhere to coronavirus prevention protocols.
Agyemang-Manu said the Health Ministry will deploy a total of 12,471 vaccinators, 37,413 volunteers and 2,079 team supervisors for a planned two-round vaccination campaign.
Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), said it was time for Ghanaians to focus on how to prepare their body’s natural defense against the virus.
He said that available vaccines had proven to be effective and that Ghana needed to break the chain of transmission of the coronavirus through vaccination.
The Director General noted that the nation had seen a decline in active COVID-19 cases in the past two weeks due to an increase in the use of face masks among the public.
Dr. Delese AA Darko, executive director of the Food and Drug Authority (FDA), said the two vaccines were ordered through an emergency use authorization; an avenue used to ensure that a necessary medical product is available in a timely manner without compromising its safety or efficacy.
“This is to assure the public that everything that we have to do to ensure that the vaccine is safe has been done for these two vaccines.”
He said that to further monitor the safety of the vaccine during the campaign, the FDA had created a nationwide safety surveillance system to ensure that each vaccinated person was actively monitored for detection and management of any adverse effects in all parts of the country.
Dr. Kwame Amponsa-Achiano, Program Manager, Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI), said that vaccination would be done in three segments.
He said that the first segment would involve the people most at risk, such as; healthcare workers, front-line security personnel, people with serious health problems, front-line members of the executive, legislature and judiciary, and people age 60 and over.
The second segment would focus on essential service providers and other security agencies such as water and electricity providers, teachers, the media, farmers, and actors in the food value chain, among others.
Dr. Amponsa-Achiano said that the third segment would be the public.
Dr. Yaw Bediako, director of the West Africa Center for Infectious Pathogens Cell Biology, said the COVID-19 vaccine was safe and would protect the public from contracting the virus.
He said it would also strengthen the immune system by “training” the system to develop antibodies against the virus.
The program manager said 188 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered worldwide and there were very few reports of reactions.
