The Presidential Vaccine Manufacturing Committee has recommended a budget of $200 million for the National Vaccine Institute’s establishment.
The sum is part of a total budget of $200 million that will be used to build the necessary infrastructure and equipment in Ghana to manufacture vaccines locally.
Prof. William Ampofo, the committee’s secretary, said this during a stakeholder engagement on Thursday while presenting a draft roadmap and plan for local vaccine manufacturing.
Professor Ampofo, who also serves as the Head of the Virology Department at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) at the University of Ghana, said that the requested sum would not be funded by the government.
He went on to say that the committee hopes to generate the funds via innovative partnerships and that it expects to get permission from parliament and the President to make the idea a reality.
“This money is not going to come from government. We think that the key strategy will be to find money from the partnerships that are evolving. The first thing is that we will earmark about $20 million for the establishment of the national vaccine institute over the next couple of years. The building has already been identified. There is a lot of work going on to make sure that this vaccine institute will go through cabinet approval, secure parliamentary approval, and then become a reality,” he stated.
President Akufo-Addo announced in July, during his 26th update on the government’s efforts to reduce the rising cases of COVID-19 in the country, a plan to invest a sum of US$25 million as seed money in the establishment of a National Vaccine Institute to spearhead the country’s efforts to produce vaccines locally.
He said that the institute’s establishment is part of the recommendations of a government-appointed committee charged with developing a realistic strategy for vaccine research and production in Ghana.
“We must be self-sufficient in this regard in the future, and prepare ourselves better to deal with any such occurrences in the future. To this end, the Committee I established, under the leadership of the world-renowned Ghanaian scientist, Professor Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, to investigate Ghana’s potential as a vaccine manufacturing hub, to meet national and regional needs, has presented its preliminary report which, amongst others, recommends the establishment of a National Vaccine Institute to spearhead this development.”
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