The measles and rubella vaccination campaign has commenced in the Greater Accra Region.
The Greater Accra Health Directorate reports that 954,212 children are targeted for vaccination.
Over the past 3 years, the country has seen a rise in measles cases across all regions which is due to the delay in conducting the campaign.
The news team followed up on one of the vaccination teams in Korle Klotey district and as at 12 noon, the team had already visited a number of schools and homes almost reaching its target for the day.
Benjamin Asare, a nurse and vaccinator expressed satisfaction with patronage. “Today has been good, we didn’t expect these numbers, most of the parents weren’t aware but the schools were aware so it became difficult, but the school has agreed that we can do the vaccination. Today, we vaccinated about 120 children as at now and we are thinking that there’ll still be more before the day ends.”
Eugenia Beatson, a public health nurse at the Osu Government Maternity Home also gave more insight.
“We have our usual clinic today and for today, we’ve already seen about 93 children. We are closing at 4:00pm so by then we should hit our target for 200 a day from the static team. We have about 27 to 28 schools in Osu so we’ve done a schedule for them. Every team is visiting about 3 schools in a day but if they finish before 4:00pm then they can do other schools. The whole Korle Klottey, we have a target of about 21,404. We have 5 sub districts in Korle Klottey so for Osu Sub district we are working with 5,700 so the target differs with every team for the day.”
The Greater Accra Regional Director of Health Service, Dr Akosua Agyeiwaa Owusu-Sarpong underscored the reason for the routine immunization program and the campaign in Ghana.
“The role of the routine immunisation program is to attain 95% coverage of MR among our children. However Ghana’s coverage for the first dose of measles containing vaccine has been below 95% for recent years. Especially in 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, some children are therefore missed with the MR vaccine and as the number of unvaccinated children rises, the likelihood of outbreaks also increases. The country has therefore adopted the regular measles mass campaign to immunise a lot of our children within a short period to prevent measles outbreaks.”
Danita is over 1 year old and has come with the father and grandmother for weight check.
“She was born here, so we check her weight here. This is her second vaccination; she already had her first. I knew there would be a campaign but didn’t know when, so we were lucky to find the vaccination exercise.”
Over 5 million children are targeted to receive vaccines due to the rising number of reported measles cases nationwide.
The vaccination campaign, which began on October 2, will run until Sunday, October 6, 2024 highlighting the need for all guardians and stakeholders to participate in this initiative to protect the lives of children.
