The Health Minister, Kwaku Agyemang-Manu, has been excused from Parliament due to the measures being taken to solve the nation’s scarcity of pediatric immunizations.
the Health Minister who was scheduled to appear before Parliament on Tuesday, March 7 to provide answers for the vaccine shortages was excused by the Speaker.
This is the second time the Health Minister, Kwaku Agyemang-Manu failed to appear before the House as he was unable to honour a February 28 scheduled appearance.
Notwithstanding reports by the National Health Insurance Authority that more than GH70 million had been authorized for the purchase of the vaccines, certain regions of the country have been affected by a lack of vaccines in recent months.
The Head of the Health Committee of Parliament, Nana Ayew Afriyie, became concerned about the precarious situation and and requested that the Minister of Health and other agency heads be present at an urgent meeting on Tuesday, February 28.
Meanwhile, the Paediatric Society of Ghana has revealed that over 500 cases of measles have so far been recorded in the country due to the unavailability of essential vaccines.
Dr Hilda Boye, the newly elected President of the Paediatric Society of Ghana said the situation is quite worrying because the delay in the arrival of the vaccines can potentially escalate the disease.
“As we speak, we are looking at about 500 suspected cases of measles. So we are worried because we are just sitting and watching, and it is getting worse by the day and that is expected also because it is an infectious disease, and we really shouldn’t have come to this place in the first place.
“We know how bad these illnesses are, and we know that there is a solution and everybody had to sit up so that we don’t get to this point,” Dr Boye said on the Citi Breakfast Show on Tuesday, March 7.