Coronavirus: Vaccination team warned against extortion

Editor of the Informer Newspaper, Andy Kankam has warned of the possibility of persons mandated to undertake the vaccination of Ghanaians against the COVID-19 pandemic, taking money from unsuspecting members of the citizenry before administering the free vaccine.

On his accord, the vaccination taskforce should rather be patriotic and focus on saving lives rather than trying to make money off Ghanaians who have already been hard hit by the pandemic.

He noted that such people who will be undertaking the vaccination will be well paid by the government and described them as dubious and unpatriotic if they ever do such a thing.

“When the vaccination starts, we don’t want to hear reports that people sent to the field to go and give out vaccinations are taking money before they give out the drugs”, he said.

Speaking on the Happy Morning show aired on e.TV Ghana and Happy 98.9 FM, Andy Kankam revealed that during the National Identification Authority (NIA) registration exercise, a syndicate made up of NIA officials was formed. He noted that the syndicate charged unknowing Ghanaians before issuing them with National IDs and fears that might happen with the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine.

He advised the Health Ministry to work with the Security Agencies to prevent the “extortion” of Ghanaians during the administration of the COVID-19 vaccine.

“We shouldn’t allow people being paid for their services extort Ghanaians. They should focus on saving lives and not try to take money from the people before giving them the vaccines”, he repeated.

Emphasizing on the need to contain and curb the spread of COVID-19, the editor appealed to persons who will be engaged to undertake the vaccinations to act in a “professional” manner for the safety of Ghanaians.

He also called on the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) and the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) to educate the citizenry on the importance of the vaccine whilst dispelling conspiracy theories.

Ghana will begin to vaccinate some 20 million persons against COVID-19 from the first week of March, said Kwame Amponsa-Akyianu, Ghana’s program manager for the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI).

Speaking at an engagement on Ghana’s COVID-19 roll-out plan, he observed that the vision of the country is to vaccinate the entire population of about 31 million but will begin with 20 million and vaccinate the remaining population in due course.

Amponsa-Akyianu disclosed that the country had gone through all the required processes and will receive its first consignment of 350,000 COVID-19 vaccines by next week to pave way for the vaccination exercise to take place next month.