President John Dramani Mahama says Ghana will be ready to finance all of its vaccines by 2030, when the country is due to complete its withdrawal from support provided by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
Speaking at the Ghana Medical Association’s 68th annual conference in Miotso, near Prampram, on Friday, Mr Mahama said Ghana currently pays for about 50% of its vaccines.
“Let me also inform you that Ghana is being weaned off the Gavi programme. By 2030, we are expected to procure our own vaccines,” he said.
“We are currently procuring approximately 50 per cent of our vaccines, but I can assure you that we will be ready by 2030.”
The president told the World Health Assembly in May that Ghana was on course to leave Gavi funding by 2030. He said the 2026 budget already included funding for vaccines, essential medical supplies and priority health programmes.
Domestic funding, he added, would continue to be strengthened for immunisation, HIV and AIDS care, tuberculosis and malaria services, disease surveillance and laboratory capacity.
How Ghana’s Gavi transition works
Under Gavi’s eligibility policy, the income threshold for support in 2026 is a gross national income per person of US$2,300.
Ghana is classified as being in “accelerated transition”, the final phase before leaving the programme. Countries enter this stage after exceeding the income threshold and paying at least 35% of their vaccine costs.
Co-financing rules introduced on 1 January 2026 require that contribution to rise to 100% over eight years. Once the process is complete, a country must finance its immunisation programme independently.
It can no longer apply for new Gavi support, although grants already approved may continue. Countries can still purchase vaccines through UNICEF or procure them directly.
Gavi’s May 2026 programme audit says Ghana entered accelerated transition in January 2022 and is expected to fund its immunisation programme fully by 2030.
Concerns over readiness
The audit, covering Gavi support between 2020 and 2024, lists spending on pneumococcal, pentavalent, rotavirus, yellow fever, measles-rubella, meningococcal, inactivated polio and malaria vaccines, as well as oral cholera vaccine.
Ghana introduced the RTS,S malaria vaccine in 2019 alongside Kenya and Malawi. Since 2024, those doses have been financed through Gavi’s malaria vaccine programme.
In October 2025, the Ghana Health Service, working with Gavi, the World Health Organization and UNICEF, launched a nationwide HPV campaign targeting 2.4 million girls aged 9 to 14. A routine dose at age nine is due to follow.
The audit says Ghana met its annual co-financing obligations but made payments late, prompting Gavi to advance funds to prevent stock-outs. Vaccines are purchased in dollars while budgets are set in cedis, and additional approval for exchange-rate losses delayed payments.
All four regional vaccine stores and all seven district stores visited by auditors reported at least one vaccine stock-out during the review period.
A 2024-2029 roadmap drafted in 2023 had not been approved by the Minister of Health or the government, and none of the activities planned for 2024 had been completed.
Ghana increased its birth-cohort estimate by about 30% in 2025 without updating the roadmap’s costs. Immunisation accounted for about 1.5% of health spending.
The review found critical controls were not working in governance, financing and service delivery. It warned that Ghana could become fully self-financing without maintaining vaccination coverage, but did not give a single estimate for the 2030 cost.
Finance Minister Dr Cassiel Ato Forson has separately said Ghana will budget for vaccines and essential medicines from January 2030, as Global Fund support winds down by 2029. The Global Fund’s assistance covers HIV, tuberculosis and malaria commodities and is separate from Gavi’s vaccine grants.
