Covax Scheme Initiated In Ghana By WHO
UNICEF Would Provide Logistics Management and Procurement of the Vaccine Due To Their Previous Expertise on the Process
The West-African country of Ghana has become one of the first countries to be supplied with a viable coronavirus vaccine through the Covax vaccine-sharing initiative by the World Health Organization. This recently launched Covax program by the World Health Organization (WHO) has the aim to ensure that the vaccine against COVID-19 infection is shared among all countries throughout the world in a fair quantity, as the infection has caused the deaths of millions of individuals worldwide. The Covax scheme is currently providing the vaccine to areas with the increased requirement.
Covax scheme has the aims to deliver around 2 billion doses of the coronavirus vaccine across the world by the end of the year 2021. Multiple developed countries, which have started manufacturing their own variants of a viable and working vaccine for COVID-19 infection, are currently facing criticism from around the globe for ordering or buying more vials of doses from the World Health Organization through its Covax scheme.
A total number of 600,000 dosages of the coronavirus vaccine have been manufactured by the joint collaboration between Oxford University and pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca, along with the Serum Institute of India have recently arrived in the capital city of the country of Ghana on Wednesday.
The process of administration of the vaccine gained through the Covax scheme would begin from the upcoming next week. The first priority for the vaccination process would be given to frontline healthcare providers, people above the age of 60 years, individuals with underlying health-related conditions, and senior officials.
During a joint statement given by the World Health Organization and the United Nations children’s fund, they said they said that the Covax vaccine-sharing initiative has become a momentous occasion and is a critical step in bringing the coronavirus pandemic to a complete end.
The African country of Ghana has a population of more than 30 million. A total number of 80,700 coronavirus cases have been diagnosed in the country since the start of the pandemic in the past year, out of which 580 people have died after acquiring critical condition due to the harmful effects of the viral pathogen. The recorded number is believed to fall short of the actual number of active cases of the country due to the low level of testing and facilities available across the country.
Though this coronavirus vaccine being provided through the Covax scheme is not intended to be administered in children, UNICEF has been involved in the project to provide their expertise in the procurement of the vaccine along with the cold chain logistic services management.
Ghana has become one of the few nations around the world that have been selected to be provided with the first batch of doses of vaccine through the Covax scheme as the country met the required precedents for receiving it.
Covax vaccine-sharing initiative
For the past several months since the development of few viable CVOID-19 vaccines which have become available across the world, have only been bought by rich and developed countries as compared to developing or under-developed nations. The initiative of Covax scheme has been set up by the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and the Gavi vaccines alliance to prevent the push back suffered by the poorer countries while trying to acquire some doses for the vaccine.
This Covax program has been designed so that when developed countries would buy vaccines for the general population of their country, they would have to agree to finance some portion to help provide access for the coronavirus vaccine to poor nations.
The Covax scheme has hopes to deliver more than 2 billion doses to individuals residing in 190 countries in a time duration of fewer than 12 months. Particularly, this program would like to ensure that the 92 under-developed countries will be able to have access to the coronavirus vaccine at roughly the same time when the other 98 developed nations receive them.
Most of the countries located in Africa are dependent on the Covax scheme to limit the number of infectious spread, but few nations like Senegal is also making separate efforts to gain more vaccine doses outside the WHO initiative.
The Director-General of the World Health Organization commented after landing the first shipment of the viable coronavirus vaccine and said that this is a major step, but the process has just begun.
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