Former Deputy Health Minister, Dr. Bernard Okoe Boye has schooled the public on the factors that led the Government of Ghana to purchase COVID-19 vaccines using middlemen.

According to him, it is very risky to acquire the vaccines using middlemen, however looking at how emergent that the Coronavirus pandemic is; it is okay to employ the services of the right middlemen if going to the source comes with a lot of difficulty.

Speaking to host Kwami Sefa Kayi on Peace FM's ''Kokrokoo'' programme, Dr. Okoe Boye cited that a vaccine like the Johnson and Johnson is said to be released in two years time which is too long a period for a country to wait for vaccinating its citizens against the viral disease.

In this case, if one can get help from a middleperson, it will go for it, he stated. 

"Because the timelines are in a year's time, Johnson and Johnson, two years time; countries are also allowed to go to other sources to get what, the vaccine . . . When you go to middlemen, there is some level of risk. The risk is that either the price can be higher than what you have gotten from COVAX or it might be contaminated, but it doesn't mean that is what will happen all the time. So, when you go to the middlemen, you must have mechanisms to reduce that risk.

''Any vaccine coming here, before we give it to Ghanaians, we let our FDA be convinced based on the code chain. They have a history. They check where was it stocked, all that; if it is not satisfied, it won't allow us to roll out. Now, so, it's possible to get a middleperson who will satisfy all these conditions, safe for use a good price," he expounded.