Source: newsthemegh.com
Yesterday, Tuesday, April 18, 2023, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo turned the first sod to kick off building on DEKs Vaccines Ltd, a group of Ghanaian pharmaceutical businesses led by the private sector.
The action is a part of measures to support the country’s goal of achieving vaccine manufacturing and production independence.
At the height of the COVID-19 epidemic, on February 28, 2021, President Akufo-Addo announced to Ghanaians his intention to produce vaccines locally. This was update number 24 of a series of addresses to the country.
He stated that in order to ensure that we would never again be puppets or victims of the international vaccination order, “it was important that we took our destiny into our own hands” due to the vaccine nationalism that the developed world had demonstrated with the deployment of the COVID-19 vaccines.
According to the President, DEKs Vaccines Limited will fill, complete, and package COVID-19 as well as other vaccines like those against malaria and tuberculosis over the next two years.
The long-term goal is to develop a candidate vaccine using cutting-edge technologies in 10 years. The medium-term goal is to continue establishing more domestic vaccine manufacturing facilities in the nation over the next five years in order to manufacture vaccines that comply with WHO GMP standards.