James Boatey, an intern field technician in charge of vaccine and disease control, loads vaccines from the Larteh sub-district vaccine freezer into a cooler. James will carry the vaccines to a nearby outreach vaccine clinic forgoing the town's lone paved road for a shortcut on dirt roads to a bus station that been taken over by the health district for their monthly outreach clinic.<br />
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The GAVI Alliance helps to buy many of the vaccines in Ghana and supports Ghana's government health service and local partners with training and improvement of refrigerated storage for the medicines. <br />
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Ghana now has one of the best-performing immunization programs in the developing world, and is is increasingly a model for its neighbors. In 2012, Ghana became the first GAVI-supported country in Africa to simultaneously introduce vaccines against pneumococcal disease and rotavirus, which tackle the world's leading killers of children -- pneumonia and diarrhea.