The Ghana Health Service says it is making strides in the elimination of vaccine-preventable diseases through consistent and continuous immunization among children.
The service says, although there has not been any recorded death following the recent outbreak of measles, it is making efforts to eliminate the disease in the country.
Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kumah Aboagye speaking at the launch of this year’s African Vaccination Week in Kumasi lamented that misinformation and hesitancy remain major challenges hindering the immunization of children.
He also disclosed that the Service is laying out processes to redesign Ghana’s healthcare delivery system to improve access and quality of healthcare services.
“The Ghana Health Service is poised to make this a reality and one of the things we are doing in the next two years is to redesign our primary healthcare delivery to ensure access to all services is improved, and the quality also improved.”
On his part, the country director of the World Health Organisation, Dr. Francis Chikasa Kasolo said there is a strong collaboration with stakeholders in the health sector to prevent vaccine shortages in Ghana.
“We work constantly with the Ministry of Health, the Ghana Health Service, and all the different agencies under the Ministry of Health, and one of the things that we ensure as we work with them is to ensure that the data or information on the availability of vaccine is current and also help them build capacity for them to monitor the vaccine situation across the country.
“This is an ongoing collaboration and our expectation is that the vaccine shortages were a one-off occurrence and that we will not see this repeated going forward because the Ghana Health Service has the capacity to track what is happening right up to the community level, so there should be no reason why the vaccines should be in shortage.”
Source:Fiilafmonline/CitiNews
