President Nana Akufo-Addo said, Ghana is determined to set up National Vaccine Institute, while delivery an address to the European Union (EU) Parliament in Strasbourg, in France on Tuesday 14th December.
The President explaining the need to setting up an institution, he said “We need to be self -reliant, and shed the image of beggars living on charity, aid and handouts, and make better and more intelligent use of our abundance resources, in order to pull ourselves out of poverty to prosperity. These are not new aspirations, they have simple been reinforced by the lessons of the pandemic.”
The President continue by saying that” We are not given credit for quickly following the science as recommended, when many leaders in Europe were still fighting ideological battles, and seeking to lay blame on the source of the virus, rather than uniting to fight it,”
Nana Akufo Addo further explained ” At every stage, We in Africa, have been dismayed to discover that every attempt was being made to make CoVID-19 also an African disease. Thus, the narrative emerged that it was not really that Africans were not dying from the pandemic, we had to be covering up the true level of infections”.
According to the President, Omicron, has been discovered in over fourty countries, with reports indicating that this variant was present in the Netherlands way before it was discovered in South Africa.
The President continue, “The world should be grateful to the South Africans scientists, whose knowledge and expertise in genomic sequencing enabled them identified the new variant. Plaudits, not the condemnation of their peoples, should have been their portion. President Akufo-Addo asked “Why is there not a travel ban imposed on the Netherlands, but against south Africa, one might ask?.”
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“Till date ,less than ten percent (10%)of Africa has been vaccinated, in comparison to the EU, for example, which as at August, had vaccinated, Seventy percent (70%) of its population. With countries on the continent still not being able to have sufficient access to vaccines in the requisite numbers, We like the World Health Organization, are worried that the phenomenon of hoarding vaccines will worsen even further, as countries begin to administer booster shots in response to the threat posed by the omicron variant of the virus.”
The President told the EU Parliament that his government has launched Agenda 111, which seeks to build district hospital in each district of Ghana where there is none, so that ordinary people can have ready access to medical care.
znewsgh.com
