A five-year national plan to guide Ghana's response to vaccine preventable disease (VPD) outbreaks has been launched in Accra.
The "Mass Vaccination Plan for VPD Outbreaks", seeks to among others consolidate all efforts needed to contain an outbreak, clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders for effective response.
Ultimately, it aims at reducing morbidity, mortality, and disability associated with VPDs by providing high-quality immunisation services to protect lives.
The Director of Public Health at the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Franklin Asiedu-Bekoe, launched the plan which coincided with the end of the COVID-19 International Vaccine Implementation and Evaluation (CIVIE) project, a four-year programme, which supported countries to effectively introduce, deploy, manage and evaluate COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr Asiedu-Bekoe said the mass vaccination plan was timely to provide clear actionable steps of ensuring equitable access to vaccines, efficient data management, capacity building and improve risk communication to effectively respond to outbreaks while minimising disruptions to routine immunisation and other health sector activities.
He said in view of the often threatening nature of VPDs, impacting not only the population but disrupting healthcare systems and depleting national coffers, vaccination remained of the most powerful public health tools to reduce the risks.
"In Ghana, diseases such as measles, polio, whooping cough, tetanus and yellow fever previously claimed the lives of children in alarming proportions and left others with permanent disabilities.
We need to look back in history to understand the devastation caused by vaccine-preventable diseases so we can understand and appreciate how far we have come and the new direction we are moving into," he said.
The Director, Public Health, noted that the success of the plan was based on collective efforts; public health officials, healthcare workers, community leaders, policy makers and all members of the public.
"Each of us has a role to play to ensure that diseases which are preventable through vaccines remain a thing of the past," Dr Asiedu-Bekoe stated.
Dr Kwame Amponsa-Achiano, the Programme Manager for the Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) at GHS, explained that the new plan was developed based on lessons learned from previous mass vaccination campaigns in response to VPD outbreaks, particularly, the COVID-19 outbreak.
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He said that the vision of the mass vaccination plan aligned with the national health policy's goal of achieving a healthy population for national development by providing high-quality immunisation services.
"The plan is anchored on the principles of equity, integration, inclusivity, sustainability, accountability, and community engagement and ownership," he shared.
For his part, the Deputy Director of Disease Surveillance, GHS, Dr Dennis Laryea, expressed optimism that healthcare workers and other stakeholders would find the plan useful.
