Ghana to start manufacturing vaccines in 2025

The Ministry of Health has announced the country’s readiness to start producing vaccines in 2025.

According to the health ministry’s Chief Director, Hafiz Adam, the country is looking at manufacturing 600 million doses of vaccines every year after 2025.

Ghana would be producing vaccines for various diseases, including cholera, HIV, pneumonia, and malaria, among others.

Hafiz Adam disclosed this on Friday, October 6, 2023, when he was addressing participants at a meeting held for discussion on the National Transition Plan on immunisation in Accra.

"Strategically, as Ghana is positioning itself as a future major local vaccine manufacturer, having a transition road map is particularly important to ensure the financial sustainability of this strategy, that should provide a boost for vaccine equity and access.

“The objective is to start manufacturing vaccines from 2025 and to manufacture about 600 million doses of various vaccines a year. Including vaccines for malaria, HIV, pneumonia, rotavirus, and cholera,” he said.

He further stated that it was very important that vaccines be produced in Ghana to make health care easily accessible to every citizen

“The fact is that we definitely cannot renege on our commitment. Posterity will certainly not be happy, and they will not forgive us. We, therefore, have no option to make it (health care) better than we have come to meet it. The health of the population remains paramount, and our path to self-reliance in vaccine financing ought not to leave anyone behind in accessing life-saving vaccines,” Hafiz Adam added.

The idea to manufacture vaccines locally was birthed during the COVID-19 pandemic – which reminded the nation that it is not advisable to solely depend on the benevolence and kind gestures of developed countries for vaccines and other critical healthcare requirements; hence the decision by the government to support the private sector in developing local vaccine manufacturing capacity.

President Akufo-Addo said Ghana manufacturing its vaccines and developing as a nation is part of an objective to be self-sufficient in healthcare delivery in its entirety, as the COVID-19 pandemic left many African countries struggling to get vaccines because the Western world was thinking about saving their people first.

The country made strides in this regard after the president cut sod for the construction of a 600-million-unit capacity vaccine manufacturing plant at Medie in Accra in April this year.

News also broke in September this year that Ghana had become the first country in Africa to manufacture a cholera vaccine, giving the country the boost, it needs as a future vaccine manufacturer on the continent.

BAJ/DAG

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