With Ghana facing intense external challenges to acquire vaccines to vaccinate about 70% of its population by the end of this year to attain herd immunity against the Coronavirus, the country has been forced to fall on diplomacy.
It has emerged that Ghana is banking her hopes on diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom, United States, and other countries to acquire additional COVID-19 vaccines for the country after vaccines obtained under the COVAX facility have been exhausted.
At a farewell ceremony for the outgoing British High Commissioner to Ghana, Iain Walker, Ghana's Foreign Affairs Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, urged the UK to help Ghana procure more vaccines.
“We are hoping that if there are any other vaccines available within the continent that countries are not using, we will be very happy to take these vaccines, so I hope that we can engage more and see where these are from. We know that there are excess vaccines in the U.S. We are looking at how we can benefit from that too,” she said.
Ghana has already exhausted a little under one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines so far, having received about 600,000 doses under the COVAX facility and another 350,000 dozes subsequently from the DR of Congo.
Ghana received the 350,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccines in May from DR Congo through the COVAX Facility (CEPI, GAVI, UNICEF, WHO), with logistical support from UNICEF. The AstraZeneca vaccine doses form part of the larger 1.7 million consignment of doses allotted earlier to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Over 1.3 million doses have been reallocated to five countries in Africa.