Ranking member on the Health Committee of Parliament has blamed the shortage of child immunisation vaccines in the country on the incompetence of the Akufo-Addo government.
Kwabena Mintah Akandoh said failure to be proactive by the Ministry of Health is to blame for the procurement and shipping challenges.
“This is a smack of incompetence and poor planning. We could have made the arrangement last year because World Health Organisation (WHO) warned about the shortage,” the Juaboso MP said in an interview on Asempa FM’s Ekosii Sen programme Friday.
Ghana has run out of essential BCG and OPV vaccines as a result of the Ministry of Health’s failure to secure procurement of these vaccines since the year began.
The BCG vaccine is primarily needed to prevent the occurrence of tuberculosis in babies, while the OPV is to prevent polio infections.
Other essential vaccines to prevent diseases such as measles, whooping cough etc. are also in short supply.
Already, the shortage of vaccines has triggered the spread of measles in the Northern and Ashanti regions.
But the Minister for Health, Kwaku Agyeman Manu, has said close to $6.4 million has been paid to UNICEF to deliver vaccines to Ghana.
This assurance, Mr Akandoh is very skeptical about given what he says is failure on government to deliver on an earlier promise.
The Health Committee ranking member noted that those in charge have failed to appropriately plan for the procurement of the vaccines and had sat and watched as the country run out of the essential vaccines.
He bemoaned how government is gambling with the lives of these vulnerable children, especially in the rural areas.
He urged government to, as a matter of urgency, procure the vaccines for the various hospitals across the country.