GHS official stresses importance of COVID-19 vaccination; urges patronage of May 4 immunisation campaign
Plans are far advanced for the Ghana Health Service to commence another round of the national Covid-19 immunisation campaign from Saturday May 4 to May 10 this year.
The exercise, which usually seeks to ensure many more eligible persons get their jabs at their convenience, is also part of efforts by authorities to contain a possible surge ad of the virus.
As of March 2024, over fourteen million nine hundred and thirty-five thousand persons (14,935,381), representing 45 percent of Ghana’s population, had received at least one dose of the COVID-10 vaccine.
Also, over eleven million eight hundred and fifty thousand persons (11,850,978) are fully vaccinated, with 6,889,700 having received booster jabs.
There are over 8 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccines currently available for the routine vaccination programme to ensure everyone is protected.
Deputy Programme Manager of the Expanded Programe on Immunization, Naziru Tanko Mohammed, at a workshop for journalists on vaccine uptake in the country explained that it is important for all eligible persons to go for the vaccines to secure immunity against the virus while encouraging those who already have to get a booster jab at least every year to maintain immunity status.
“We still have a number of people who are still getting the virus. Because of that, there is still the need to continuously protect the population and as we know, with virtually all the covid-19 vaccine that we have, when you take it, you need to from time to time get boosters because the protection that you get from the initial doses that you take actually winds down with time.
So, we say that for the normal population every year, you get a booster and for those that have high risk you ensure that from 6 months to 12 months you get a booster so it’s really critical that’s we will be starting another campaign on May 4 to ensure we bring it closer to the people”.
According to him, plans are far advanced to start routine vaccination where people can just walk into any health center and access the vaccine. While maintaining that the vaccines are safe for all.
By Sarah Apenkroh
