Shortage of childhood vaccines now a thing of the past; we have enough stock - Health Minister

The Minister in charge of Health, Kwaku Agyemang-Manu has assured Ghanaians that the country no longer has a challenge with shortage of childhood vaccines.

Early this year, parents feared for the lives of their newborns as a result of the shortage of vaccines used for routine immunization of babies from birth to at least 18 months.

This massively affected Ghana’s Childhood Immunisation Programme run by the Ministry of Health.

Addressing a Minister’s press briefing at the Ministry of Information on Wednesday, September 6, Health Minister Kwaku Agyemang-Manu told the press that the shortage of these childhood vaccines is now a thing of the past.

He stressed that the country has enough vaccines in stock that will last a long time.

“Let me tell you that our challenges are now over. We have adequate stocks. We are looking at the stock levels on a weekly basis. We have some good allocation now to do vaccination and I don’t think that this case of shortage is going to happen in the near future in the country,” Kwaku Agyemang-Manu said.

Under Ghana’s Childhood Immunisation Programme vaccines against polio, tuberculosis (TB), hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenza type B (DPT/Hep B/ Hib 1), and some other infectious diseases that are particularly dangerous to babies are administered.

At the press briefing, the Health Minister also assured that the necessary arrangements have been made for children to receive free cancer treatment under the National Health Insurance Scheme.

He said although the initiative had some challenges when it was introduced, the key stakeholders have been engaged to address the bottlenecks.

“We had some little problem. We’ve had good engagement with providers and the National Health Insurance Authority. All centres that have been identified to do care now are doing care that will be paid by the National Health Insurance. So we have now crossed that hurdle,” Health Minister Kwaku Agyemang-Manu shared.