An Immunologist and Research Fellow at the West Africa Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP) at the University of Ghana says both incumbent and previous governments have failed to invest in scientific research.

According to Dr Yaw Bediako, this is so because scientific research has not been a priority to governments and Ghanaian electorates.

Speaking on Joy FM Friday, he said: "What scientists in Ghana have been crying about for so many years is that there have not been sustained investments in research. I believe it has not been a priority. We are a small country with limited resources. We cannot match America's level of investment but that is why the calculation is done as a proportion of GDP...Successive governments have failed to realize the importance."

He noted that politicians cannot take the blame since they are the reflection of the society and uphold the values its citizens uphold.

Adding that pressure from electorates for tangible projects is a basis for Ghana's poor investment in scientific research.

"You cannot just blame the politician. If I am a politician and I come and build a school in your village, that is something you can point to within four years and you will vote for me. But if I tell you that I've invested 10 million dollars in Noguchi where nobody will necessarily see the benefits immediately, our electorates won't respond to that. Our politicians are a reflection of our society. The values they hold dear is what we hold dear," he said.

On the country's ability to produce its own vaccines, Dr Bediako stated unequivocally that "Ghana cannot at this stage manufacture vaccines."

"The reason we cannot do that is, we have not invested sufficiently. You don't get up one day and start manufacturing," he added.

Buttressing on how Ghana has failed to invest in scientific research, he noted that research being carried out at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) is being financed by the Japanese government.

"The new building they have was funded with over 20 million dollars from the Japanese government," he revealed.

He indicated that Ghana cannot compare its capacity to those of Vietnam and Malaysia because Malysia as of 1996 invested 0.2 per cent of its GDP in research and about 10 years later, the number is about 1.3 per cent.

"Vietnam is one of the places where a lot of our drugs are manufactured. Vietnam has considerable manufacturing capacity because of a lot of these multinational pharma companies and because probably labour may be cheaper in those parts of the world that have established factories there. It is also possible that the government may have made it conducive for these companies to establish industries there.

"We think we are a middle-income country. We are not. These countries are not like us. They are ahead of us," he added.

According to him, the whole continent of Africa contributes 1 per cent to the world's scientific research and that is largely because "we don't invest in scientific research."

For Dr Bediako, unless government accepts that it has overstated its capacity, it would not be able to solve its challenges.