Policy Think Tank, SEND Ghana, says the Ministry of Health must improve on Ghana’s cold chain equipment regime by prioritizing funding of its equipment.
According to SEND Ghana, Pre COVID-19, Ghana had huge challenges and deficit as far as cold chain equipment was concerned.
It noted that the situation improved lightly because government placed priority on COVID -19 vaccines by procuring fridges for the vaccines. This was part of many recommendations made to government as part of the launch of a report on “Monitoring compliance of Ghana’s Deployment and Vaccination Plan and citizens COVID-19 Vaccination Experience”.
Key findings among the research conducted shows that 4 out of 5, representing 80 percent of sampled size of health workers and teachers were vaccinated.
The report conducted between April and September mainly in the Ashanti and Greater Accra Regions, also monitored the COVID 19 vaccination regime and the protocols that had to be followed and also assessed citizens who have gone to vaccinate.
Deputy Country Director of SEND Ghana, Dr. Emmanuel Ayifah said the attitude of health workers in charge of vaccination was encouraging, whiles the protocols were strictly followed.
It recommended that, the Ghana Health Service should commend the staff and motivate them as well as organise intensive training for its staff. He wants the Ghana Health Service to adopt use of a messaging strategy that aims at protecting families and friends.
“During the COVID, health workers and teachers were prioritised in terms of vaccination So We also wanted to find out to what extent the vaccination did well. In terms of the findings and some key recommendations was that generally, citizens we interviewed during the exit interview was session were largely satisfied”.
He explained that the year 2020 was a bad year globally because of the COVID and Ghana put in place certain measures to contain the spread of the virus.
The World Health Organisation which received the report commended SEND Ghana and its partner, Partnership for Transparency Fund(PTF) for carrying out a comprehensive research on COVID-19 pandemic.
By Richard Bright Addo|3news.com|Ghana