President Nana Akufo-Addo has indicated that the country is facing difficulty in getting access to COVID-19 vaccines for the national vaccination programme.

According to him, the global politics on manufacturing, procurement and distribution is not helping the situation.

President Akufo-Addo revealed that the government has set up a team to work out the modalities that will see to the production of vaccines in Ghana.

The team is led by former Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, Professor Kwabena Frimpong Boateng.

Speaking at an SDG forum at the Jubilee House, President Akufo-Addo said: “We have obvious difficulties as far as the vaccination programme is concerned”.

“Unfortunately, we are the victims of this worldwide shortage of vaccines that poor and less-advantaged nations are experiencing by not having access to the vaccines”.

“So, that, of course, is a major challenge for us, the procurement logistics and the issues involved in it.”

A member of Ghana’s COVID-19 response team, Dr Bernard Okoe Boye, also noted that the government is considering other options to get vaccines for the country.

“What is happening to Ghana is a global issue. So, what we are doing is that this government is engaging directly with other European countries who have stock of AstraZeneca and are not deploying them that much. So, we will continue to explore,” he said.

He continued: “It will be difficult to speak and state the specific date because with this Africa platform that we are using and the direct Russia government engagement people are talking about, they tell us that it will take six or 12 months before the vaccines will come and remember in a year, a lot can happen.”