The Sputnik vaccine from Russia will soon be available in Ghana - FDA Director

The Director of the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), Mimi Darko says government will soon acquire the Sputnik covid 19 vaccine from Russia plus three others to supplement the immunization exercise which is set to go nationwide in the fight against the coronavirus.

Ghana received the delivery of coronavirus vaccines on Wednesday, February 24 2021, as 600,000 AstraZeneca shots landed in a plane from Serum Institute of India snuff out coronavirus infection in the West African country and per the update of the FDA, the Ministry of Health will soon make purchases for shots from Russia, India and China and a few other companies.

“So we’ve worked on another vaccine, and that is called the Sputnik vaccine from Russia,” she said.

"As soon as once we do the evaluation to show that it is the right vaccine. The ministry will do their purchasing.

“We also have another two vaccines one from India one from China, that we have evaluated. As soon as we are done we’ll let the minister know, and then we can go ahead with all the other plans for making sure the vaccine is available. So that means that we have about four at the moment.

“We also in discussion with another three more companies. And once they bring their documentation we'll evaluate it.

The Ashanti Regional Health Directorate on Tuesday morning, March 2, 2021, held a press conference at their premises on the vaccine deployment strategies. When asked when the Sputnik vaccine and the other from India will be ready, Madam Mimi Darko said “during the pandemic, we used not more than 15 days, which means people work even Saturday and Sunday to review their documentation.

“So in a pandemic, we review this in 15 days. So in the next 10 days, we would have finished with the other two, and let you know whether it is good to use not good use. It is not automatic that we’ll, by all means, approve the vaccines.”

The deployment strategies as revealed by the Ashanti Regional Health Directorate would be based on the segmentation of the population. They told that it will be expanded to include children and pregnant women as time goes on and more safety data become available.

Madam Mimi Darko assured the entire populace not to be troubled about conspiracies surrounding the vaccine since the Food and Drugs Authority examined the vaccine before approval for use.

“We have looked at the policy, we have looked at the efficacy, we have looked at the safety. We have not compromised on anything, in order to make this vaccine available. At that time when it was undergoing trials, it was used on almost 40,000 people, since it has been approved in other countries, it has been used in over 30 million people probably even more than that.

“We as the food and drugs authority, we have what you call a maturity level three agency listed by the WHO, we Are also Regional Center of Excellence, there is no way that you allow a vaccine that is no safe, that IS not on the right quality to be used on Ghanaians, just to show you the vaccine is safe. It is efficacious, it is right that we use it to ensure that we can vaccinate as many of the population to enable us, and attain what we call herd immunity and bring the coronavirus down.”

She disclosed that side effects cannot be done without yet that is nothing strange to cause people to boycott the preventive exercise.

“There are very few side effects of this vaccine, the side effects of this vaccine actually very mild they are the normal side effects that you would get when you use any other vaccine.

“A bit of chill. Maybe a bit of a day but within one or two days, it is gone. Even after that we have a good safety monitoring system in place that will ensure that everybody who's vaccinated will be followed up to ensure that if they experience any of these mild side effects, it will be reported to us. It will be managed by the Ghana health service team, and we will put it in our database just so that we have a database for Ghanaians.

"Be assured that the quality is assured the safety is assured and efficacy is assured.”