Last month, Ghana updated its Covid 19 policy, to require vaccination and negative PCR tests of travellers, combined with heavy fines for airlines transporting the unvaccinated and rigid quarantines after vaccination for the unvaccinated.
These, appropriately, were due increasing global infections.
While announcing the new policy, the Ghana Health Service’s Dr. Aboagye announced that most of the new Omicron infections have been diagnosed at KIA.
Despite doing better than many other African countries, Ghana’s Covid policy has been disproportionately focused on air travellers. We test travellers aggressively and quarantine them at their cost. We contact trace them. We have efficient testing for travellers and yet we hardly test Ghanaians at home.
Even with vaccinations, contrary to our stringent requirements for travellers, we have been rather lackadaisical about those at home. Indeed, against the WHO goal of vaccinating 40% of people by the end of 2021 and the world already vaccinating 50.3%, Ghana and Africa have an average of just 14%. Actually, some global figures put Ghana at under 10%. This same attitude has affected our approach to masks and social distancing. And our accountability for Covid funds and the execution of Covid policy has been abysmal.
Do we care so much about travel-related Covid because it is a cash-cow for some? Do those traveling through Kotoka matter more than those who live in Kumasi or Kyebi?
Last week, there were reports of Healthcare facilities under pressure because of increases in staff infections.
It is time to revamp our Covid policy to give as much focus to those at home as to those who travel.
First, we must ramp up our vaccine acquisition and delivery. Vaccine diplomacy is just begging for vaccines– we can beg more!!
Second, we must test more aggressively.
Third, we must revise our isolation and quarantine protocols in line with evolving knowledge– to make them shorter and to support those in need with public funds.
Fourth, we must aggressively develop protocols for Outpatient treatment that make use of off-label medications that are time-tested and cheap.
Finally, we must have more accountability, involving Parliament, in our Covid policy.
We shall overcome.
God bless Ghana.
Arthur Kobina Kennedy, MD
(January 8th, 2022)
