The Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchway says Ghana’s election to the UN Security Council gives the country the opportunity to advocate for impartial access to vaccines for African countries.
According to her, Africa’s reliance on foreign countries for vaccine support has seen a number of challenges since the countries relied upon are unable to deliver as expected due to the rise of the pandemic in such countries.
“Today we do not manufacture any vaccines on the continent. We were relying on India unfortunately because they have their own issues in the upsurge of the virus, we were not able to realize any purchases from India and this is not just Ghana the whole of the continent”.
This she said makes it necessary for Africa to manufacture its own vaccines to help the continent deal effectively with the virus.
“It a shame that, as we speak, the vaccines that were promised to Africa with the population of 1.2 billion and as a continent we have not received anything more than fifteen million. We believe that it is important because no one is saved until everyone is safe”. She added
Madam Ayorkor Botchway was speaking at a meeting held by the Ministry of Information on Monday, where she addressed the media on the 59th Ordinary Summit of the Authority of Heads of State and Government of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Speaking on Ghana’s procurement of vaccines from Russia and other countries, she noted that the inability of the country to get the vaccines on time is because they are in high demand.
Madam Ayorkor Botchway noted that Ghana will be a voice on global matters of concern for all developing countries especially for Africa.
Source: Rosemond Asmah/ATLFMNEWS
