TY - JOUR AU - Amponsa-Achiano, Kwame AU - Frimpong, Joseph Asamoah AU - Barradas, Danielle AU - Bandoh, Delia Akosua AU - Kenu, Ernest T1 - Leveraging Lessons Learned from Yellow Fever and Polio Immunization Campaigns during COVID-19 Pandemic, Ghana, 2021 T2 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal PY - 2022 VL - 28 IS - 13 SP - 232 SN - 1080-6059 AB - Ghana is a yellow fever–endemic country and experienced a vaccine-derived polio outbreak in July 2019. A reactive polio vaccination campaign was conducted in September 2019 and preventive yellow fever campaign in November 2020. On March 12, 2020, Ghana confirmed its first COVID-19 cases. During February–August 2021, Ghana received 1,515,450 COVID-19 vaccines through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access initiative and other donor agencies. We describe how systems and infrastructure used for polio and yellow fever vaccine deployment and the lessons learned in those campaigns were used to deploy COVID-19 vaccines. During March–August 2021, a total of 1,424,008 vaccine doses were administered in Ghana. By using existing vaccination and health systems, officials in Ghana were able to deploy COVID-19 vaccines within a few months with <5% vaccine wastage and minimal additional resources despite the short shelf-life of vaccines received. These strategies were essential in saving lives in a resource-limited country. KW - yellow fever KW - polio KW - COVID-19 KW - vaccine deployment KW - Global Health Security Agenda KW - SARS-CoV-2 KW - coronavirus disease KW - severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 KW - viruses KW - respiratory infections KW - zoonoses KW - pandemic KW - Ghana DO - 10.3201/eid2813.221044 UR - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/28/13/22-1044_article ER - End of Reference