Data personnel trained for COVID-19 vaccination survey

The Government with support from its development partners, is training data collection personnel to gather accurate statistics in a COVID-19 vaccination survey.

The training, which is being organised by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) in Accra over a three-day period, is engaging 106 participants, who would be paired into 53 teams, and distributed among the historically proven 43 districts within the Greater Accra, Greater Kumasi and parts of the Central regions of Ghana over seven days.

Dr Kwame Amponsa-Achiano, the Programme Manager for the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), in a media interview on Wednesday, said the objective of the survey, was to collect accurate data to estimate the proportions of fully, partially, and un-vaccinated individual eligible persons in the selected districts, and describe concerns related to the COVID-19 vaccine.

He explained that the Service, had previously conducted a similar survey among healthcare workers, and that although administrative data were often taken in every vaccination exercise, they were challenges including inaccurate numerator and denominator or population base.

Therefore, the current survey formed part of the standard practice for ensuring quality and would be used in confirming the existing administrative data, he said.

Dr Amponsa-Achiano said the total cost for the training and survey was about half a million Ghana Cedis ($15,000) and showed that so far about 30 million out of the 34 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines received by Ghana, were distributed among all the districts of the country.

“Out of this, 21 million doses of the vaccine had been used, which translated into 12 million on eligible individuals, and that as at November 25, 2022, nine million Ghanaians were fully vaccinated against COVID-19,” he said.
He stressed that the results of this current survey would further inform programme managers and stakeholders in Ghana on the formulation of appropriate strategies for improving COVID-19 vaccination coverage.

Dr Isaac Tetteh, a newly graduated medical officer, who is a volunteer to the programme, said he deemed it an honour to give back to society after benefiting from their support towards his education, and promised to remain committed to this important national assignment.

Dr Kofi Zilevu, another newly trained doctor, also explained that his passion for enhancing the welfare of humanity led him to sign on to the programme, to offer his knowledge and experience to help curb the spread of the pandemic.