The Director General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Patrick Kuma Aboakye, has started that only a small number of COVID-19 vaccine doses had to be discarded because they could not be used before the expiry date.
He explained that a major factor for this was the limited time available for the GHS to inoculate Ghanaians before the doses expired.
Citi News reported last week that some vials containing the COVID-19 vaccine had gone to waste in the Northern Region, at a time where many Ghanaians are struggling to receive their first dose.
But responding to the media reports, Dr. Kuma Aboagye explained that while it was unfortunate that some of the doses had been wasted due to the limited time available, the health staff still discharged themselves creditably during the vaccination exercise.
“The truth of the matter is that, with the last batch of vaccines that were received, the expiry date was the 13th of April. All regions were able to use it except for the 480 doses that could not be used in the Northern Region and the 100 doses in the Oti Region. So if you look at the wastage, the numbers are not so much. If you look at the time frame that we had, it affected the EPI program, although the health personnel tried with the vaccination,” he said.
The Northern Regional Health Directorate confirmed that about 480 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine had gone to waste due to its inability to exhaust its supply of vaccines at the close of the vaccination exercise on Tuesday, April 13, 2021.
According to the Directorate, the decision to end the exercise was a precautionary measure taken on the advice of the Food and Drugs Authority, as the current AstraZeneca vaccines available in the region are expected to expire on Friday, April 16.