It will be completely wrong to allow private institutions to bring in vaccines - KCCR lecturer

A lecturer at the Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research (KCCR), Dr. John Amuasi, has stated bluntly that it will be wrong for the private sector to be involved in the procurement and distribution of coronavirus vaccines in the country.

He said that the present circumstances require that each and every vaccine that enters the country is monitored judiciously to ensure that they are used in the right way and for the right people and so, allowing the private sector to participate in the process, will not be right.

"The main thing about vaccines is the safety and efficacy. So far, no vaccine developed by anybody, be it in the US, in Europe, in India, in China or wherever has shown any safety issues. That is a very important point that we need to drum home.

"I totally agree with this statement that we do not allow the private sector to procure vaccines. These vaccines need to be tightly controlled and you need to be very sure that whatever comes in is authorized. There is a bunch of people out there who are already preparing the so if you are able to tell the people of Ghana that only A, B, and C vaccines are authorized, anything else is not authorized, you're much safer.

"Even in the most advanced countries, they are not getting into this private sector supply chain kind of thing for the vaccines. It will be a completely wrong move, a faux pas for us to allow the private sector, at this stage, to bring in vaccines and distribute. Otherwise, I can say this bluntly, and I say this totally in the interest of the country and our safety and our integrity, the government must continue to tightly control this and ensure that we can track and trace every single vaccine that comes into this country and we must be able to pout in mechanisms to track any fix that might come in. This is not child's play; it's life and death," he said.

Dr. John Amuasi was speaking in support of the statement of Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, the Presidential Adviser on Health, on the fact that private sector will not participate in the buying of vaccines for the country. They spoke on Newsfile on the JoyNews channel on Saturday, February 27, 2021.