Dr. Patrick Kuma Aboagye who happens to be the Director General for the Ghana Health Service has disclosed that, few number of COVID-19 vaccine doses had to be ditched following the fact that they could not be administered before it’s expiry.
The director made it known in a statement that, the major course for this amounts to the limited time offered to the GHS to innoculate Ghanaians before the doses expired.
During the early days of last week, it was reported that some vials containing the COVID-19 vaccine had gone to waste in the Northern Region, practically at a time where many Ghanaians are struggling to receive their first dose.
Dr. Kuma Aboagye responding to questions from the media accounted that, even though the time given for the administration of the vaccines was limited leading to few dosses going waste, the health staff who were on duty for this operation still made conscious efforts to discharg themselves creditably during the vaccination exercise.
He said that “The truth of the matter is that, with the last batch of vaccines that were received, the expiry date was the 13th of April. All regions were able to use it except for the 480 doses that could not be used in the Northern Region and the 100 doses in the Oti Region. So if you look at the wastage, the numbers are not so much. If you look at the time frame that we had, it affected the EPI program, although the health personnel tried with the vaccination,”
The directorate in charge of health affairs in the Northern Region confirmed that about 480 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine had expired due to its inability to exhaust its supply of vaccines at the close of the stipulated time to end the vaccination exercise this on April 13, 2021.
The Directorate made it known that, the decision to end the exercise was a precautionary measure taken on the advice of the Food and Drugs Authority, as the current AstraZeneca vaccines available in the region are expected to expire on Friday, April 16.
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