By Yussif Ibrahim
Kumasi, July 19, GNA – The Ashanti Regional Health Directorate is seeking to vaccinate an estimated 176,630 people as it embarks on another round of COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
The exercise which begins today, July 19, and expected to end on Sunday, July 23, 2023, is the seventh mass vaccination campaign since 2020.
Dr. Emmanuel Tinkorang, the Regional Director of Health Services, announced this at a news briefing in Kumasi to launch the campaign.
Vaccination teams, according to the Regional Director, would be deployed to houses, markets, schools, lorry station, churches, mosques, and communities to administer the vaccines.
People can also walk to any health facility to take their jabs even beyond exercise, Dr. Tinkorang observed.
The theme for the five-day exercise is, “Protect Yourself, Protect Your Family, Get Vaccinated Against COVID-19 now.”
The Regional Director said a total of 1,825,367 people in the region, representing 56.7 per cent, had been fully vaccinated, with 2,518,996 receiving at least one dose.
He said if those who had received at least one dose took their second jab, the region could exceed herd immunity which is 70 per cent of eligible persons.
The Ashanti Region, he said, recorded the second highest cases among the 16 administrative regions with Kumasi Metro and Obuasi Municipal being the most affected by the pandemic.
He underscored the need to make effective use of multiple and diverse channels to deliver information and adopt strategies to generate demand to increase coverage.
Dr. Tinkorang mentioned vaccine hesitancy as the major challenge confronting the directorate, adding that, there was adequate vaccine in stock as well as enough human resource to administer the vaccines.
He said although the pandemic had been declared over, the virus was still endemic in certain areas and that it was important to ensure high coverage to protect the population.
According to him, the COVID-19 vaccines would be integrated in the routine vaccination exercises of the Ghana Health Service since the virus had come to stay.
He thanked the media for their continuous support to the directorate in the dissemination of messages and urged them to raise the needed awareness about the current exercise.
GNA