The Ghana Health Service, with the support of its partners, has launched the 6th National COVID 19 Vaccination Day campaign with the aim of administering about 1.5 million doses of COVID 19 jabs to bring the country closer to herd immunity.
As part of efforts to intensify vaccine uptake in Ghana, the Ministry of Health, Ghana Health Service and its partners instituted the National COVID 19 Vaccination Day campaign in February 2022, building on the foundation of previous National Immunization Days for Polio, yellow fever and other diseases. Since then, five series of these campaigns have been held throughout the country resulting in great success.
Speaking at the launch, the Director General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye touted the great successes of the five earlier campaigns moving the total number of administered doses of the vaccines from 9.7 million doses at the start of the first campaign to 22.6 million doses as at 13th January 2023.
The country aims to vaccinate about 18.2 million people, representing about 60% of its total population to reach herd immunity. Currently, 54% of the targeted population have been fully vaccinated with a little over 3 million people having received booster doses.
The World Health Organization country representative, in a statement read on her behalf, commended Ghana as one of the countries that has effectively managed to control the COVID 19 pandemic largely using preventive and other non-treatment measures. She notes with sadness the low vaccine uptake levels among many African countries with the continental average reaching only 27% of its total population as compared with the global average of 65% and the North American average of 71% vaccination rate.
The sixth National COVID 19 Vaccination Day campaign would run from Friday the 20th to Tuesday the 24th of January, 2023 and “we’re going to have 6000 vaccination teams deployed across the length and breadth of this country, employing both the static, that is facility based …(and) close-to-client strategies, that is taking the vaccine to them, to reach the unreached, and even going to overbanks to reach people who live across rivers. The aim is to administer about 1.5 million doses, bringing us closer to herd immunity”, states Dr Kuma-Aboagye.
