One of Ghana’s foremost policy think tanks, SEND-Ghana has outdoored a Report dubbed, Monitoring Compliance of Ghana’s National Deployment and Vaccination Plan (NDVP) and Citizens’ COVID-19 Vaccination Experience.
The Report, which emerged from a research conducted by SEND Ghana with support from the Partnership for Transparency Fund (PTF) assessed citizens’ experiences, opinions, and motivations for vaccination, and vaccination uptake among prioritized groups using data from the COVID-19 Vaccination database.
Conducted in selected districts in the Greater Accra and Ashanti Region, the research also looked at adherence to vaccination safety protocol, the distribution of cold chain and logistics as well as the uptake of COVID-19 vaccines among health workers and teachers.
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Presenting the research report at a stakeholders Dialogue in Accra on Thursday, Project Officer at SEND Ghana, Anita Asare Owuku indicated that 4 out of 5, representing 80 percent of the sampled size of health workers and teachers were vaccinated.
The report 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 the use of a messaging strategy that aims at protecting families and friends.
It also asked the Ministry of Health to improve Ghana’s cold chain equipment regime by prioritizing funding for it.
It observed that before COVID-19, Ghana had huge challenges and deficits as far as cold chain equipment was concerned.
The report revealed that the situation improved a bit because the government placed priority on COVID -19 vaccines by procuring fridges for the vaccines..
The research was conducted between April and September in the Ashanti and Greater Accra Regions.
Addressing the stakeholders, Deputy Country Director of SEND Ghana, Dr. Emmanuel Ayifah disclosed the attitude of health workers in charge of vaccination was encouraging, whiles the protocols were strictly followed.
“During the COVID, health workers and teachers were prioritized 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 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.
Representatives of the Ministry of health, the World Health Organisation, and other stakeholders present at the event admitted that the research report was a true reflection of what happened across parts of the country where similar research had been conducted
By: Mohammed Suleman/Publicagendagh.com
