Ghana to have infectious disease centre

An infectious disease centre with World Health Organisation (WHO) specifications is to be built in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region.

The centre will provide services, training and research on infectious diseases, including the Ebola Viral Disease (EVD).

The Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Victor Asare Bampoe, made this known at a symposium on the EVD in Accra, which was organised by the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) yesterday.

The symposium was on the theme, “Ebola: Have we gone to sleep?” and was sponsored by the First Atlantic Bank.

Dr Bampoe said the government was in discussions with the World Bank to help finance the building of the centre.

Rationale

He explained that the infectious disease centre formed part of the measures being put in place to ensure that the country was adequately prepared to handle any Ebola eventuality, adding that the country was still on high alert to ensure that no Ebola case entered the country.

Commending the health volunteers who went to Liberia and Sierra Leone to help fight the disease, Dr Bampoe said such volunteerism had helped the country to gain experience in treating the Ebola disease.

The WHO Country Representative, Dr Magda Robalo, who spoke on the international perspective of the EVD, said the outbreak of the disease in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone had provided useful lessons for both the international and local communities.

She pointed out the need for all to take the threat of diseases seriously, stressing the need also for all to invest in health systems.

Dr Robalo called on the country not to be complacent with its surveillance on the disease and underscored the need for investment into the management of diseases, especially those that seemed dormant.

Lessons/recommendations

Sharing lessons learnt from the country’s participation in tackling Ebola in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the Head of the Emergency Department of the Tema General Hospital, Dr Lawrence Ofori-Buadu, said effective communication with health workers, as well as the government, played a major role in tackling the disease in the two countries.

He called for more testing laboratories for Ebola to ensure that people were given prompt attention.

A physician specialist, Dr Joseph Oliver-Commey, in a presentation on ‘Where are we? Our preparedness’, called for the scaling up of the country’s preparedness in the communities and homes.

The President of the GMA, Dr Kwabena Opoku-Adusei, said so long as cases were still being recorded in the affected countries, there was the need for Ghana to be on guard.