NGO marks African Vaccination Week - Calls for more funding for health sector

The Concerned Health Education Project (CHEP), a Non-governmental Organization (NGO), working with health facilities and governments to improve access to health delivery across Africa, is marking this year's African Vaccination Week (AVW), with a call on the government to increase funding for essential needs in the health delivery system.

A release signed by Mr. Isaac Ampomah, Executive Director for CHEP, and copied to the media, said, there was a need for governments across the continent to increase budget allocations to the health sector with a focus on the provision of adequate vaccines.

"As countries across the continent bounce back after COVID-19, which has devastated the economies of many countries, it is a priority to start identifying sources and avenues of increasing the national budget for health. This way, issues of vaccine shortages will reduce- the non-availability of vaccines must be seen as as a national security threat going forward," he said.

Mr. Ampomah said, as the continent celebrates African vaccination week, epidemic preparedness and emergency funding must be seen as one of the critical needs of the country and the Parliament of Ghana must see this as one of the laws when passed, will help the country accelerate the United Nation's (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's) on Universal and Primary Health coverage.

It is on record that, despite decades of progress in increasing access to immunization in lower-income countries, at least, 12 .4 million children still go without basic routine vaccines every year and these are the zero-dose children that needed to be targeted.

50% of these children are in 3 key geographical areas – Urban, Remote/Slums, and Conflict Setting areas.

The 2023 African Vaccination Week with the theme: "The Big Catch Up" - re-enforces the need to bring all hands together, including Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and other actors to increase immunization and deepen confidence in the acceptance that, truly Vaccines work and Vaccines save lives, whilst targeting the zero dose children and getting them to undergo routine immunization.

Vaccination has remained one of the mediums to combat diseases across the world and has proven to be life-saving, averting several diseases that would have resulted in mortality.

Today, vaccination remains one of the disease prevention pillars of Global Public Health.

The advent of COVID-19 brought about a united front to address global public health issues, leading to the awareness of the weaknesses in the health systems of developed and underdeveloped nations.

Vaccine hesitancy, therefore, has no space in global public health delivery.

However, the processes of administering vaccines in countries for trials have to involve a consultative process and must involve several actors to deepen understanding and the science of the vaccine that has been accepted for trials in any country - This way, the vaccine hesitancy myth associated with vaccination will be reduced.

African Vaccination Week (AVW), which is observed between the 24th - 30th of April, each year, continues to remind Africans and the Global South of the need to sustain the momentum and to keep the science and the understanding of vaccine efficacy across all nations, communities, and households.