GHANA – The Rockefeller Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) delivered 1,829 digital tablets to support the Ghana Health Service’s (GHS) five-day national COVID-19 immunization campaign.

The campaign’s goal was to boost vaccine coverage by addressing misperceptions about the virus and countering persistent vaccine misinformation, while the tablets will strengthen GHS’ overall capacity to collect, analyze, and share data for routine immunizations and other primary health services.

With more frontline health workers equipped with technology to capture critical Covid-19 vaccination data during health outreach visits across Ghana, GHS can better identify remaining coverage gaps and address barriers to access.

Today, less than 40% of eligible Ghanaians have received at least one Covid-19 shot, compared to nearly 70% globally.

The new tablets, alongside key investments from the Ghanaian government and other funders, are helping advance the Ministry of Health’s commitments to vaccinate 18.2 million people against Covid-19 by the end of 2023.

It will also increase GHS’ use of electronic health (e-health) information technology to deliver health services. In addition to digital devices, the United States has donated more than 12 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to support GHS’s national immunization efforts.

GHS first started using digital tools for Covid-19 containment in March 2020, rapidly repurposing much of its digital tools inventory for pandemic response.

The following year, as Ghana became the first African country to receive Covid-19 vaccines through the COVAX facility, GHS recognized the need for additional equipment to track immunization rollout and issued a call for global support.

USAID, which previously provided another nearly 1,700 digital tablets to GHS to strengthen the country’s Covid-19 immunization efforts and digital health information systems, helped facilitate this new collaboration between the Ghanaian Ministry of Health and The Rockefeller Foundation.

As a key player in the U.S. government’s Initiative for Global Vaccine Access (Global VAX), USAID will continue to support digitization efforts as health workers fold the applications into existing programs, working through long-time GHS partner Results for Development (R4D) to deliver on-the-ground training.

The Rockefeller Foundation’s support to GHS is part of The Foundation’s US$55 million Global Vaccination Initiative (GVI), which aims to increase demand for Covid-19 vaccines and accelerate global vaccine equity through the use of data and digital tools.

As country-wide Covid-19 response shifts from crisis to control, the Ghana Health Service will continue integrating digital devices and data into immunization strategies and other health programs, building a stronger base for future system-wide digital health projects.

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