The Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Insurance Authority, Dr Bernard Okoe Boye, has called for a national conversation on making COVID-19 vaccines mandatory.

Dr. Okoe Boye believes having a national conversation to determine whether vaccination should be mandatory or not will settle the issue of vaccine hesitancy and help defeat the disease.

Over 22 million COVID-19 doses have been administered since 2021 with the majority taking only a single shot.

“How can we have this clear evidence that the key to avoiding death, avoiding the hospital, avoiding keeping us in our rooms and yet our friends are not taking it? This is what leads us to whether we should start discussions on vaccine mandates.

“If behavioural change is becoming difficult, and we identify that the reasons are almost immutable is mandate the way to go. I don’t have the power to determine, I can only trigger the discussion.”

“From January 3, 2020 to January 30, 2023, there have been 171,112 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ghana with 1,462 deaths, reported to WHO.”