Bawku conflict will affect COVID-19 vaccination campaign – RHD

The Upper East Regional Health Directorate (RHD) says residents in the Bawku Municipality and its environs will not benefit from the National COVID-19 Vaccination Days (NaCVaDs) campaign to prevent and contain the spread of the virus in the Region.

It said apart from the Bawku Municipality, residents in the Kandiga and Doba communities in the Kassena-Nankana Municipality were also likely not to benefit from the five-day campaign owing to chieftaincy and land conflicts.

The conflict in Bawku and subsequent restrictions in the area, including the imposition of curfew and ban on motorbike riding, and also a land dispute between the people of Kandiga and Doba which equally led to curfew in the two communities would affect the vaccination exercise.

The Ministry of Health announced a new policy on COVID-19 vaccination which includes vaccination of pregnant women and the administration of booster doses, as part of measures to increase and improve vaccine uptake among the populace, to check the spread of the virus.

The five-day campaign scheduled to commence from February 2 to 6, 2022 would see health professionals mobilize and reach out to more eligible persons for the vaccination exercise.

Dr. Josephat Nyuzaghl, the Deputy Upper East Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) in charge of Public Health, at a media engagement in Bolgatanga, said the security situation in the conflict areas would affect the campaign in the Region.

“It has been difficult to get all our health workers to communities to reach out to as many people as possible. For this campaign that we would be embarking on, Bawku Municipal for instance will not be taking part,” he said.
Dr. Nyuzaghl said the Directorate would rely on advice from the security agencies and the various Municipal Health Directors on safe days in the areas for vaccines to be safely deployed, especially in the Bawku Municipality and its environs.

Speaking on the number of doses in the Region, he said a total of 680,460 AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, Moderna, and Pfizer vaccines were received.
Out of the number, 429,757, representing 63.2 per cent doses were used, noting that 250,703 doses, representing 36.8 per cent of AstraZeneca, Johnson, and Johnson Pfizer vaccines were available for use in the five days exercise.

“We do not have issues regarding vaccine availability in the Region. People must avail themselves to be vaccinated. With those who have received at least one dose so far, we have been able to vaccinate 301,660 out of the 830,693 Regional target.

“This gives us a proportion of 36 percent of our target population. For those fully vaccinated, we have been able to reach 141,562 persons, representing 17.0 percent of our target population,” the Deputy Director said.

On issues of expired vaccines, Dr. Nyuzaghl said the Directorate adopted strategies including daily tracking of data to manage and minimize incidences of expired vaccines and had been able to redistribute vaccines from low to high utilization areas to ensure they had no expired vaccines.

“I am happy to say that all the vaccines that we received were utilized even before they expired. So, in terms of strategies, micro-planning is critical when it comes to any vaccination programme, and what we have done over the period is to specifically target some of the decentralized departments and agencies to ensure they are aware of the vaccination exercise.”