2022 budget: Mintah Akandoh back calls for budgetary allocation for immunisation

Member of Parliament for Juaboso Constituency, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh has backed calls for an allocation for immunisation in Ghana’s 2022 budget statement.

The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta will on November 17, 2021, be in Parliament to read the Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the government for the 2022 Financial Year to the house.

Ahead of the reading, SEND Ghana as part of its advocacy with stakeholders believe that there should be an allocation for immunization especially as donor partners who have supported in the past are planning to pack out.

At a high-level forum organised by SEND Ghana on Thursday, October 28, 2021, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh who is a Ranking Member on the Parliamentary Select Committee has indicated that the advocacy is in the right direction.

According to him, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has shown that preparedness is key hence government must take proactive measures for the future by constantly allocating a slot in the yearly budget for immunisation.

“I support that [budgetary allocation for immunization] because you see we should not wait till we are hit by a pandemic or epidemic before we prepare towards it.

“If we really want to sustain some of these things we have to look at our own budget because we say we are a middle-income country and so some of these donor partners will probably want to withdraw. So we have to look at other means of sustaining these immunizations and how to prepare against these epidemics and pandemics in the country,” Kwabena Mintah Akandoh told journalists on the sidelines of the forum.

The Juaboso MP in an assurance, further stressed that once a recommendation is made in Parliament, he will push for government to make the needed investment towards immunization.

He said even if the 2022 Budget Statement does not come with an allocation for immunization, he will go to the floor of the house with a recommendation himself.

SEND Ghana’s high-level forum on immunisation financing was organised on the theme “sustaining domestic financing for immunisation and epidemic preparedness in Ghana: the role of national and local government in the 2022 budget and beyond”.