The Hill News

ACCRA, GHANA â€" I am currently on an official assignment back home in Ghana from my position as my country’s ambassador to the United States. Here, everyone wants to know about the relationship between the two countries.

I tell them that the relationship is strong and has remained vibrant and productive in the past few years.

They ask for examples. Out of the many, the one that immediately comes to mind is the introduction of two new life-saving vaccines across my country just last week.             

Ghana became the first African country to introduce pneumococcal and rotavirus vaccines at the same time, simultaneously tackling the leading causes of the world’s two biggest childhood killers â€" pneumonia and diarrhea.

In Ghana, these two diseases account for roughly 20 percent of deaths in children under the age of five. For the vaccination against pneumococcal disease alone, some 400,000 children in our countr! y will be immunized and protected for life.

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