Are we now joking with immunisation?

It is widely acknowledged that immunisation constitutes one of the most-effective ways of saving lives, ensuring aeonic prosperity and improving health and well-being. The immunisation of children is of humongous significance to public and child health as it can curtail the devastating onslaught of the so-called six killer diseases of childhood – tetanus, measles, pertussis, diphtheria, tuberculosis and poliomyelitis.

Consequently, it is utterly preposterous that Ghana, my motherland, is experiencing child immunisation vaccine shortage (see VOA News: https://www.voanews.com/a/child-immunization-vaccine-shortage-hits-ghana-/6981057.html). The incessant complaints of the shortage of vaccines by nursing mothers, health facilities turning nursing mothers and their children away and health officials attributing the shortage to the depreciation of Ghana’s currency make one wonder if Ghana is gravitating towards a beach of destruction, as our political leaders watch unconcerned.

Quixotic, it really is, that the NPP government that is mandated to ensure good health and well-being are doing nothing about it as parents keep gnashing their teeth and wringing their hands in daily anguish for the fear of their wards being attacked by preventable diseases. Not without credence, it is, to note that our political leaders are superciliously concerned about their fat sinecures and care less about the plight of the citizens. That is the only logical explanation for the crass exhibition of intransigence on the part of His Excellency NADAA and his compatriots for still keeping Mr Ofori-Atta on his seat, as the value of our dear cedi keeps plummeting on a daily basis, among other economic woes.

Pathetic, it is, rather, that the We-Have-The-men Party is not in tune with the UNICEF observation that the timely vaccination of children is enormously useful in saving their lives from vaccine-preventable diseases and the fact that it can help us make impeccable and impressive strides in attaining some targets in the UN SDG3, which focuses on ensuring good health and well-being for all. Despite the numerous and vibrant “men” in the Finance and Health Ministries, we are still confronted with an inability to procure vaccines for our children, a situation which can spell social and economic doom for the country. So where are the men?

Symptomatic, it is, of how politics is run in Ghana. Slogans! Promises! Insensitivity! Disappointments! They have distastefully become commonplace in our body politic, with the pundits consistently maintaining that they are inimical to the development of our country. For those of us who sedulously follow the political affairs of Ghana, it behoves us to draw the attention of the ruling NPP to the fact that politics is about the people and whoever messes with the Ghanaian people shoots himself in the foot. If you are inspired by the unpardonably invidious assertion that some people will always vote for your party whether or not everything is hunky-dory, you had better rethink your actions and inactions.

Ultimately, it is incumbent upon us to take the immunisation of children seriously, given the avalanche of significance it carries. As such, there is the need for unwavering commitment on the part of our political leaders towards the immunisation of our children, rather than their perennially shameless exhibition of political pomposity and crass negligence.

Kwabena Aboagye-Gyan
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