This is not a shining moment in Ghanaian public health. Via allAfrica.com, a report from Public Agenda in Accra: Ghana: Public Flee From H1N1 Vaccination. Excerpt:
Members of the public have started shying away from the H1N1 flu vaccination following several reported cases of adverse effects from those who have taken the vaccination. The effects complained of are weak joints, headache, dizziness, symptoms of malaria, palpitation, swollen face, among others.
“The only information the nurse provided was that the injection was painful but I should try and endure. But after the injection I started experiencing acute pain at my shoulder and I became very weak as if I have been ill for a long time and I?m now recovering,” 20-year-old Nana Yaa shared her experience with the Public Agenda.
Kwame Osei, 25 years, made known the nightmare he went through following the vaccination. “I was vaccinated in the morning but around 9:00pm I started experiencing intense palpitation. Finally I had to go to the clinic where I was given medication and came back home.”
Akua Safoa, a 35-year-old dressmaker, disclosed, “The next day after the ejection my face got swollen and I became very weak”.
In a related development, Mr. Ramon Osei Akoto, Leader of the United Love Party, has called into question the safety of the H1N1 vaccine describing it as “deadly as the actual virus”. He has accordingly intimated that the vaccination should be discontinued.
He based his call on information he gathered from a website by the Organic Health Advisor which has copious data on the adverse effects of the H1N1 flu vaccination some of which had been previously reported by Remixx World. These include deaths, seizures, paralysis and Guillain Bare Syndrome (GBS), a condition which causes progressive muscle weakness and paralysis (the complete inability to use a particular muscle or muscle group), which develops over days or up to four weeks, and lasts several weeks or even months.
Meanwhile a release jointly issued by the Ministry of Health and Ghana Health Service last Wednesday, says some of the reported adverse cases of the vaccination by Ghanaians are “not unusual”, however, the two institutions are taking such reports with “all seriousness and are following all such adverse events, including the death of someone in Accra.”
You’d think that the authorities would have anticipated such responses, since they were often seen in the northern hemisphere last fall. But the authorities seem to be playing catch-up against the United Love Party and the medical wisdom of the Organic Health Advisor.
