Ghana’s Program Manager of the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI), Kwame Amponsa-Akyianu has said that Ghana will not suspend the use of AstraZeneca vaccines even though there have been reports that some European countries have done so.
Some European countries such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain have suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine over reports of dangerous blood clots in some recipients, even though the manufacturers and international regulators say there is no evidence that the shot is to blame.
Kwame Amponsa-Akyianu, reacting to the news has insisted that the European countries that suspended the use of the vaccines did so hastily because they “have lost their skills in vaccination”.
He noted that unlike them, Ghana has mastered the art of vaccination and understands when to take certain actions and when to withdraw.
Speaking to Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show, he explained: “The whites have lost their skills in vaccination. We have been doing vaccinations and campaigns for a long time even without COVID. I remember in 2013, we did 42 percent of our population in one week with measles.
Last year, we had four different vaccination campaigns. We had 3 polio vaccination three times in 2019, looking at approximately 5 million children on each occasion.
So, there are some things that the whites have lost track of for a long time so they are in fear. For us, we wouldn’t have withdrawn the vaccine like that because we know that when you are doing a live campaign, definitely you will have something we call a baseline report meaning that whether you have vaccines or not there are events that will happen”.
Dr. Amponsa-Akyianu shared that the EPI is not perturbed by the concerns raised by these European countries. Rather they are worried that these concerns will only create “unnecessary fear” in people.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has urged countries not to pause Covid vaccinations, as several major EU member states halted their rollouts of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab.
According to WHO, there is no evidence of a link between the vaccine and blood clots as reported by some European countries.
Ghana, under the World Health Organization’s COVAX initiative, received 600,000 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India (Covishield).
The country is targeting a herd immunity of its population as it expects to vaccinate some twenty-million persons from the first week of March.
Ghana’s active COVID-19 cases stand at 3,701 with 698 deaths.
By: Alberta Dorcas N D Armah
