Western Regional Health Directorate on alert to handle meningitis
The Western Regional Health Directorate has indicated that even though no health facility in the region has crossed the epidemic thresholds of pneumococcal meningitis, the authorities are not resting on their oars to deal with any eventuality.
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The directorate said it had informed all the districts about the outbreak of the disease in certain parts of the country and that all the health facilities provided weekly situational reports to the regional headquarters.
Besides, the directorate said all medical superintendents and district directors of health services had been provided with copies of enhanced meningitis standard operating procedures (SPOs) to assist them in the management of the disease in the event of an outbreak.
The Deputy Western Regional Director of Health Services in-charge of Public Health, Dr Kofi Asemanyi-Mensah, made this known to the Daily Graphic in an interview in Sekondi.
Cases of meningitis
The outbreak of meningitis in some parts of the country in the past week, claiming several lives has caused fear and panic among the people; and so far, more than 548 cases have occured in the country with 93 deaths.
The infectious ailment has symptoms such as headache, fever, stiffness of the neck and general body weakness.
In Ghana, the worse outbreak of meningitis, Cerebro Spinal Meningitis (CSM), occurred in 1994 and 1996, which affected 17, 000 people and claimed 1,000 deaths.
The Deputy Western Regional Director of Health Services also indicated that all the district health authorities had been directed to embark on a mass enhanced education in the various communities for the people to be aware of the signs and symptoms of meningitis and the need for them to report to the nearest health facility for attention.
Laboratory tests/airborne
Dr Asemanyi-Mensah said the regional public health reference laboratory was also on standby to receive samples of suspected cases from the various districts which did not have the capacity to conduct laboratory tests.
He explained that since they did not have the ability to conduct the tests, the region had sent out to them sample collection kits which would enable them to pick samples and submit same to the reference laboratory for the appropriate action.
The deputy regional health director maintained that the region was ever prepared in case of outbreak of any disease, saying‘‘We have the technical capacity to nip it in the bud.’’