The Ghana Medical Association (GMA) has watered down claims by the Ministry of Health that the country is prepared to deal with a possible outbreak of the deadly Ebola disease.
The Association has admitted that some measures have been put in place to battle any possible outbreak but it says the system cannot even deal with just two cases of the hemorrhagic disease.
Their revelations come on the back of a report by the Northeastern University that puts Ghana on top of a group of countries likely to record an Ebola outbreak before the end of October 2014.
[contextly_sidebar id=”p8vc7kC9UTRmdCIzgJULn7p7bsFB5T02″]Government has however assured Ghanaians that it has instituted robust measures to deal with a possible outbreak.
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Tuesday, Deputy Health Minister, Dr. Victor Bampoe said “when it comes to getting ready for incident management, the Tema treatment center is up and running, there is still some few modifications that we are continuing to do that will make it even better.”
But the General Secretary of the GMA, Dr. Frank Serebour insists government must do more.
“Let me say that even as doctors,we feel that the training is inadequate. If you look at Ebola, it is not just doctors, every health worker is at risk. And indeed every Ghanaian is at risk. So in terms of training, I don’t think it is adequate. And we also don’t feel that we have enough protection. As you are aware, it is recently that the Chief of Staff was talking about even doing some kind of insurance for front line staff,” he said.
According to Frank Serebour, the current stock of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) in the country is also not enough.
“There are 9000 PPEs in the system , every single district should should at least have some. So 9000 PPEs are woefully inadequate. We are not saying they should come and stock PPEs here, but what we are saying is that the channels for providing them should be open so in case we need them, it can easily be made available. And of course the fact that we haven’t completed the treatment centres in Kumasi and Tamale is problematic.”
Ebola has killed over 4000 in the worst affected countries in West Africa – the countries hit by the disease are Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Senegal and Nigeria.
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By: Nana Ama A. Asante/citifmonline.com/Ghana