Personal hygiene can stop spread of cholera
By the last count, more than 10,000 people had contracted cholera, with more than 100 reported dead.
Advertisement
In some jurisdictions, the situation would have been declared a national emergency.
Perhaps our government has not done so in the hope that the numerous interventions put in place will halt the devastating nature of the disease.
It is a sad commentary that in this day and age, the entire country is on its knees from the cholera outbreak when, some time in May this year, the Ghana Health Service issued a health alert warning particularly residents of Accra to keep their surroundings clean.
We can say that nobody took heed of the health alert to clear the city of mounting refuse, especially in anticipation of the rainy season.
Some commentators have described Accra as a filthy city not deserving of the accolade Millennium City.
Markets and suburbs of Accra are virtually buried in filth, while the people who pollute the environment do not seem to have any sense of service to themselves and society to clean where they live or do business.
When the people refused to adopt personal hygiene and change their attitude towards the environment, the fertile ground was created for a preventable disease such as cholera to take its toll on the residents and, within two months, the hospitals and other health facilities were bursting at the seams.
Some of the victims survived but about 10 per cent of them lost their lives.
This is alarming!
Besides the filthy surroundings, food vendors also helped to spread the disease, as most of then served food near choked gutters, refuse dumps and toilet facilities.
We know that the district assemblies have very stringent regulations on food vending in the country, but like many other pieces of legislation, the regulations are never enforced.
The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has made public interventions to manage the outbreak of cholera, with the focus on traditional caterers, food vendors and consumers.
We must be concerned about the health of schoolchildren who will return to school soon, bearing in mind the fact that if the situation remains unchanged, the cholera epidemic will claim more lives.
Parents and guardians must make sure that they provide warm meals for their children to avoid the situation where they will eat from wayside food vendors.
The Daily Graphic thinks that clean-up exercises should not just be organised from time to time but that they should become part and parcel of our daily endeavours.
It should be everybody’s concern to join the campaign to keep our surroundings clean.
