By Christopher Tetteh
Abi (B/R), Oct. 11, GNA – The Ghana Red Cross Society (GRCS) has encouraged people living in hard-to-reach and vulnerable communities to embrace and participate in the ongoing Polio and COVID-19 diseases vaccination exercise by the Ghana Health Service (GHS).
Mr Solomon Gayoni, the GRCS Secretary-General said the move was towards the achievement of universal health coverage and well-being of the entire Ghanaian citizens.
The GRCS has, therefore, targeted the hard-to-reach and vulnerable communities to educate and sensitise residents to ensure no child within the vaccination age would be left out in the ongoing national immunization against poliomyelitis, he said.
Mr Gayoni said this when he was speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on the sidelines of a polio vaccination monitoring exercise at Abi, a farming community in the Berekum West District of the Bono region.
He stated, “vaccination hesitancy is among the major challenges in outreach health care provision exercises”, hence, the monitoring and community education and sensitization through local radio stations, information centres and face-to-face engagements to increase public awareness on the need to embrace immunization as part of health care services delivery.
Mr Gayoni added that the education and sensitisation were also to help the people to eschew theory conspiracies, and religious and faith-based beliefs causing vaccination hesitancy.
He announced as a voluntary organisation, the GRCS had deployed 400 volunteers nationwide with 42 in the Bono Region working with the GHS to reach households, particularly those within the remote rural areas to ensure total coverage for the GHS to attain the set target of the exercise.
Mr Gayoni pleaded with leaders of religious and other faith-based groups to educate their members on the significance of the exercise, avoid hesitation and go for the Polio and the COVID-19 jabs and any routine immunisation by the GHS for their own health and safety.
GNA