The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has charged city authorities to enforce their proposed ban on the sale of food on the streets.<\/p>\n
This follows the Service’s announcement on Tuesday in a bid to curb the spread of the cholera disease with has so far claimed 80 lives and affected over 10, 000 people.<\/p>\n
The GHS said it is in talks with institutions like the Accra Metropolitan Assembly and the Local Government Ministry to ensure the existing sanitation laws are enforced to the letter.<\/p>\n
The Director General of the GHS, Dr. Ebenezer Appiah Denkyira on the Citi Breakfast Show<\/strong> on Wednesday said the Service is proposing the ban on sale of food on the streets.<\/p>\n According to him, the disease keeps affecting people who buy unhygienic food saying, \u201cwe know how it is transmitted which is through infected foods and from our research, we realized that a lot of the people who come bought the food from outside on the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n He pointed out that the sanitary regulations do not permit the sale of food under unhygienic conditions \u201cso it\u2019s now time for the city authorities to ensure the regulations are applied.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn other words, anybody who is selling food outside or even your restaurant must conform to the regulations. We should also make sure that people do not sell near the gutters where people are defecating,\u201d he advised.<\/p>\n The GHS boss added that vegetable growers who use gutter water to irrigate their produce should also be made to stop to ensure that sanitation prevails.<\/p>\n He said his outfit is in talks with transport station managers, market leaders and city authorities to take responsibility for their immediate surroundings.<\/p>\n \u201cAll we are saying is that the right things are done\u2026when it comes to cholera, all of us have to come on board; it\u2019s a collective effort to ensure that the right things are done and this is the time to ensure that the right things are done,\u201d he remarked.<\/p>\n The areas which are likely to be affected by the ban are the Ashiedu Keteke area, Agbogboloshie, Abuja and Odorna.<\/p>\n Dr. Appiah Denkyira admonished public toilet operators to provide chlorine water to flush the toilets to kill all the germs.<\/p>\n He urged the FDA and the Local Government Ministry to \u201ccheck that the preparation of food for sale is done under hygienic conditions. So anybody who certified where you sell the food must also come to certify where you prepare the food.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been in the books all this while and so when cholera and these things come, you apply it.\u201d<\/p>\n