President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has charged fellow West African countries to plan towards vaccine production amid the coronavirus pandemic.
President Akufo-Addo, who is also the ECOWAS Chairman, stressed the need for his fellow Heads-of-State to showcase their commitment to their people.
“Let us continue to pursue national and regional efforts to fight COVID-19 and move rapidly into the domestic production of vaccines for the protection of our citizens and for the growth and development of our economies,” he said at the end of the year ECOWAS meeting in Abuja-Nigeria.
“We must step up our efforts to deal with these tasks that are imposed upon us, and we must act in such a way that no one will doubt our resolve to protect our people and the peace and stability of our countries.”
He further reiterated his criticism of the travel bans imposed on some African countries, which he described as “unjustified and unacceptable.”
On the vaccine production front, Ghana’s Presidential Vaccine Manufacturing Committee has presented a proposed amount of $20 million budget for the establishment of the National Vaccine Institute.
The amount is part of a total budget of $200 million that will be used to set up the institute and put in place other infrastructure for the local production of vaccines.
Currently, according to the World Health Organization, only 102 million people, or 7.5 percent of the continent’s population, are fully vaccinated.
Some observers have blamed the hoarding of vaccine doses by some western countries for this situation.
