Our scientists can deliver world-class coronavirus vaccine – Atta Akyea

MP for Akim Abuakwa South Samuel Atta Akyea has challenged scientists in Ghana to deliver a world-class coronavirus vaccine.

According to him, the country was rich in the area of intellectual property and our scientists have the capacity to develop a vaccine. He was making a contribution on the floor of parliament today as MPs discussed the coronavirus situation.

“I do not know the number of scientists we have in Ghana. This country is a very serious country in terms of intellectual prowess and the rest of them, we do not lack. The UN and World Health Organizations and all international institutions we always field world class scientists.

“I believe and I want to submit that probably the bigger your trouble, you should also develop an ingenuity to defeat your trouble. So I want to urge our men of science that this is very opportune for us to say that Ghana has developed a world class vaccine that the US will want to import,” he stressed.

He further underscored that he believed that Ghanaian scientists were up to the challenge: “…it is a bad situation we find ourselves in but it can also be a good moment for us to be a net exporter of vaccines to help the world,” he added.

Ghana is expecting to receive six million doses of coronavirus vaccines by April 2021 after it joined COVAX, a 92-nation vaccine collaborative program aimed at ensuring equitable access to safe and effective vaccines worldwide.

Information Minister-designate, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said government will procure additional millions of safe doses of the vaccines to ensure the critical mass of the citizenry become immune to the coronavirus, a status known as herd immunity.