When friends and family got sick last year, people across Ghana scrambled to get shots. But there weren’t enough. Now, many say they don’t want the jab. Local volunteers are struggling to change their minds.
Covid-19 cases are virtually non-existent these days here in the dust-covered villages around Worawora in eastern Ghana. Many people in these small communities, where people line narrow, winding roads selling mangoes and vegetables, feel no urgency to get vaccinated — some even run away when health care workers approach with coolers filled with shots.
The King’s Medical Center in northern Ghana includes a large wing to treat malnourished children. These children are suffering from dehydration and a lack of essential nutrients, including iron. | Erin Banco/POLITICO Their determination is rooted in a mix of dread and wanting to prevent a nationwide health disaster and the feeling that they have to make up for lost time. The doses should have come sooner, health care workers here say. They should have been able to start vaccinating the general population long before they did in late August 2021.
One of the volunteers, Priscilla Oppong, who is from the Biakoye district area, checks a small notebook lined with pencil markings to see who in the village has received the shot. There’s the woman in the home at the center of the neighborhood, her mother and a few men down the path. There are a handful of others who have yet to get the jab. As the vaccinators approach, several men prance away, avoiding the conversation they know is coming.It’s a common problem across the nation.
The vaccination campaigns are moving slowly but, some say, steadily. For example, in Ghana, the Ministry of Health mandated districts across the country to try and give 13 percent of all people eligible for first, second and booster shots during the government’s second national vaccine campaign April 21 to 26. Multiple districts were unable to reach that target. But the numbers weren’t all bad — some missed the mark by just a few thousand shots.
That seems increasingly likely. The USAID Global VAX program is at risk of losing steam after Congress failed to approve $5 billion in additional global Covid funds last month. Without it, USAID will struggle to fund its Covid vaccine program in Ghana. The funding it is currently using to prop up vaccination campaigns across Africa is dwindling and set to run out by the summer. There was a chance that funding was going to be included in another Ukraine supplemental package.
Health care workers say many people are not simply hesitant to get the shot —they just downright reject it. Vaccinators don’t just have to lay out the science behind and benefits of the shot. They have to also dispel conspiracy theories. “A lot of people don’t want it. They think the white people from America and Europe are here to get rid of them.”“The vaccinations here did not take off at the same time as the West,” said Eric Quaye-Appiah, who helps lead the Covid vaccination response in the Biakoye district, where Worawora is located. “In March 2021 we had some vaccine for health care workers. But it was August before the general population could get the vaccine. Meanwhile, all the other richer countries were vaccinating.
A member of the Biakoye district vaccination team picks up a box filled with Covid-19 doses delivered by Zipline, which is a California-based company that has a hub in Ghana to help deliver vaccine, medication and blood to hard-to-reach areas. | Erin Banco/POLITICO “Some of the men in the region think the shot is going to give them erectile dysfunction,” she says, her room of peers, including Quaye-Appiah, erupting in laughter.
A health care worker in Worawora, Ghana checks the expiration date on a box of Covid-19 vaccines. This district has had thousands of doses expire over the past year because Ghana receives vaccine with short shelf life. | Erin Banco/POLITICO Ankuvie is sitting in one of the main rooms off the entrance of the district’s health office, just a few minutes drive from the senior high school. In this room, health care workers plot out how to ramp up vaccinations among both children and adults and track disease outbreaks. Binders line the bookshelf on the side of the room — just one of them is titled Covid. There are several for malaria, some for tuberculosis and HIV.
“For us, we aren’t seeing or focusing on Covid,” she says. “We are seeing a lot of malaria. We test to make sure and then give them tablets to take home. We will see how this girl feels after 24 hours of treatment. She may have to come back.” The communities on this road are further apart than those near Worawora and in Okere — and the houses lack reliable electricity. The roadside structures, where men and women sell food products and local goods, have just one light bulb for when the sun goes down — providing only enough light for someone standing in the doorway.
“I think we equally have the same challenges the other districts have. Vaccine hesitancy has been very high in the region. And our team hasn’t had it easy at all,” he says. “But we also have a good strategy in place.” In another situation, a local religious leader who received his primary series vaccination went around to his parishioners, telling them they would go to hell if they received the shot. The disinformation campaign got so bad the police had to intervene. “He had to go to the police station and he was warned that if he continued to spread those lies he would be in trouble,” says Bordotsiah.
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