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 sub-region.
[contextly_sidebar id=”UTvqL2RycO2uWz19bFpTTiBOGu5Bfgt0″]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.
By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana