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The Asuogyaman District Director of the Ghana Health Service Mrs Rebecca Bantey urges the general public to still take in the COVID-19 vaccines.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo in his address to the nation on the 28th of May, 2023 made the declaration that the disease is no longer a health emergency in the country.
In an interview with Robert Jormo-Amon Ashaley, a student journalist at the Ghana Institute of Journalism, Director Bantey stated that her district still records cases of COVID-19 and that could possibly be the situation in other districts. Therefore, there is a need for more people to get vaccinated against the killer disease.
She says that the challenge they face in effort to reduce the infection rate as much as possible in the area, especially in the time when all restrictions have been lifted and other preventive measures are not enforced, is the refusal by the people to take in the vaccines on unscientific basis.
She explained that while some refuse to take in the vaccines based on some usual myths that surround them and the fact that the President has said that scientists and health experts have declared that we no longer have a public health emergency of international concern, majority also do so on religious and political grounds.
She went further to say that “even though the President has announced that the COVID-19 pandemic is over in Ghana which meant that all restrictions have been lifted and we are back to the pre-Covid-19 situations, she wants to remind that the president's announcement that Ghana has begun the process of manufacturing vaccines with the establishment of the National Vaccine Institute and the two vaccine manufacturing plants the country now has in place which are Atlantic Life Sciences Limited which he commissioned last year and DEK Vaccine Limited which he did sword-cutting for some weeks ago, lay great emphasis on the importance of the vaccines and the need for the public to still get themselves vaccinated against the disease that terrorized the world a few years ago”.
Citing an example with yellow fever, the director said, “Like all past pandemics still remain even after they have been declared as no longer emergency situations, COVID-19 also remains with us”. She stated, that beyond the cases her district still records, she is of the strong belief that some cases of deaths that occur after short illnesses could possibly have links with COVID-19 infections.
She entreated, that the general public, especially those in her jurisdiction to understand these and voluntarily make themselves available to take in the COVID-19 vaccines in order to inoculate themselves against the disease that still lingers around us but now doing harm silently.
