The Health Ministry says it will consider abrogating its controversial contract to purchase Sputnik V vaccines from United Arab Emirates middlemen if they fail to meet a July deadline for supply of the last batch of vaccines.

The middlemen are accused of inflating the price of the vaccines and one of them is a fugitive. They had so far failed to meet several contractual deadlines for the supply of the vaccines.

Ghana reached an agreement for the supply of 3.4 million doses at 19 dollars per dose instead of the manufacturer’s advertised price of 10 dollars. So far only 20,000 doses have been delivered.

Chief Director at the Health ministry Kwabena Oko-Afari says government will take a final decision on the deal in July.

“We have an expiring date for the agreement as well for the delivery of the 300,000 thousand doses. We have up to the end of July for them to deliver, if they don’t deliver by that time, I believe that we have to decide whether we will extend it or we will abrogate the contract,” he said.

His comment come after Norwegian newspaper, GV had disclosed that one of the middlemen is a wanted criminal in Norway. The WHO had advised Ghana to check the backgrounds of middlemen we plan to engage to help supply vaccines.

The Health Ministry’s Chief Director says government was only concerned with securing the vaccines and not who the suppliers are.

He said a background check was done on the middlemen they went into contract with before going into contract with them, adding that the checks turn that he was a businessman.

"We need the thing the person has it and you would say that the price is okay given the market conditions we did the due diligence and knew the person was a businessman who is selling as for other things about the person I cannot tell," he said.