President Akufo-Addo said, has said Ghana has so far received five million doses, which have been administered to frontline health workers and those classified as being most at risk.
According to him, Five million is not a figure to be sneered at, particularly when we consider the situation in many other African countries.
We are grateful that our speaking at United Nations General Assembly meeting, Nana Akufo-Addo said efforts at the management of the pandemic and vaccine distribution has been recognized, and still hoping to vaccinate twenty million of our people by the end of the year.
President Akufo-Addo continued, “Ghana agrees with the call of the Rome Declaration of Global Health for voluntary licensing and technology transfers to boost vaccine production. The Africa Union is working with WHO, WTO, and other global partners to expand its vaccine manufacturing and deployment.”
He told the Assembly that Ghana recognized that vaccination is the way to protect populations and revitalize societies.
In the case of Africa, the President stated that vaccinating seventy percent (70%) of the population in the shortest possible time, as is being done elsewhere in the world, means some nine hundred million Africans have to be vaccinated.
He stressed that the Afreximbank’s structuring of the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Taskforce’s two-billion-dollar acquisition of four hundred million Johnson & Johnson vaccines is part of the historic African Union’s COVID-19 Vaccine Development and Access Strategy.
“It is a critical milestone in our collective fight against the pandemic, in a continent suffering the worst brunt of vaccine nationalism. The Africa Vaccine Acquisition Taskforce vaccine program, partly manufactured in South Africa, is the single largest and most far-reaching trade transaction since the entry into force of the African Continental Free Trade Area in January this year,” he added.
President Akufo-Addo described it as an “eloquent testimony” to the benefits of domestic production and pooled procurement in Africa, as envisioned by the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement.
Source: Mybrytfmonline.com
