Up to 15 local companies are willing to start producing COVID-19 vaccines for Ghana, according to Executive Secretary of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, Lucia Addae Ntiri.
She revealed that also the Association engaged the Ministry of Health about their willingness to manufacture vaccines for the country and the dialogue started even before COVID hit Ghana.
The association subsequently appealed to the government to permit it to produce COVID-19 vaccines locally after they took up the challenge when COVID-19 hit Ghana, and produced hand sanitizers, nose masks, and other Personal Protective Equipment at the peak of the pandemic, to forestall the need for the government to import these items.
Ghana became the first country globally to receive a vaccine shipment from the COVAX facility – a global initiative that’s trying to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines in India– when 600,000 Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine doses were delivered in February 2021.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund, which markets the Sputnik V vaccine globally, also announced Ghana’s participation in Phase 3 clinical trials of the single-dose Sputnik Light vaccine.
President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said in March 2021 that Ghana should possess the capacity to become self-sufficient in the manufacture of items such as masks, hand sanitizers, and disposable gloves – basic items needed to combat the spread of Coronavirus.
“We are not talking just pharmaceuticals. We are far too dependent on the things made abroad and imported by us for use. We should be making most of the things we make in Ghana ourselves, and I am seeing what is happening to us, in this crisis, as an opportunity. It has very big consequences, but it also an opportunity. They say necessity is the mother of invention and advisedly so,” the President said.
Source: Mybrytfmonline.com/Kofi Atakora
