The Health Ministry has stated that
Ghana is “moderately ready” to fight a possible outbreak of the deadly Ebola
virus disease.
The Deputy Health Minister, Dr.
Victor Bampoe on the Citi Breakfast Show on Friday said moves to put
Ghana in a good position to battle any outbreak are ongoing.
“I think we are moderately ready and
if we were to get a case…that is when we will test it [measures put in place]
but we have done everything to make sure we are ready.”
There have been about 100 reported
cases of Ebola in Ghana but tests on all suspected patients have proven
negative.
There are also concerns about
Ghana’s vulnerability especially at its porous borders with the rest of the
Currently, the United Nations (UN)
Mission on Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) is establishing a logistics centre
in Accra where 250 UN personnel will be operating from.
The center is to ensure a rapid,
effective, efficient and coherent response to Ebola in neighbouring West
African nations specifically, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
Although some persons including
the Member of Parliament (MP) for Manhyia South, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh,
have raised concerns over the establishment of the center in Ghana, the head of
the UNMEER, Anthony Banbury has assured that they have put in place
stringent standards to ensure the disease is not imported into Ghana.
Dr. Bampoe dispelled assertions that
the nation is ill-prepared to combat the disease.
He said the health sector is “really
well prepared” and stakeholders are “constantly aspiring to go higher.”
According to him, the rapid response
taken by health personnel who came into contact with 100 suspected Ebola cases
should be a consolation to the general public that an effective system exists.
The Deputy Health Minister admitted
that weak health systems have allowed the disease to spread, noting that, the
worst hit countries have “relatively weak post health conflict systems.”
He commended Nigeria and Senegal for
assiduously working to contain the cases they recorded saying, “Nigeria did
excellent incident management…Senegal has had that one case and nobody has died
yet and it sort of petted out.”
Dr. Bampoe added that the three
pillars of Ghana’s Ebola strategy is being implemented to the latter
which include; public education, active surveillance within the
communities and borders and incident management.
Stoy; Citifmonline.com
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