Cape Coast Teaching Hospital on high alert for Lassa fever

The Cape Teaching Hospital (CCTH) is on high alert with high clinical readiness for any case of lassa fever which will be reported to the facility.

Dr Daniel Asare, Chief executive Officer of the Hospital, said immediate attention and treatment would be provided to prevent it from spreading.

Dr Asare said this when management and staff of the hospital undertook a clean-up exercise as part of activities to mark the 61st Independence Day celebration.

“Doctors are looking at everybody who come to the facility with a watchful eye while lower level referral centres have been tasked to ensure minimal movement from the peripheral to the centre with any suspected case”

One person has died after he was diagnosed with Lassa Fever, a disease that has killed at least 54 people in Nigeria within the past seven weeks.

The man, 26, reportedly died at the Tema General hospital in the Greater Accra Region.

The board members of the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital, led by its Chairman, Nana Prah Agyensam VI, joined in the effort to clean the compound and the various units as well as the staff quarters of the hospital.

They cleaned beds, trolleys, cupboards, tables, chairs, instruments, walls and floors, leaving them clean.

Dr Asare said lower referral centres including CHPS compounds had been advised to create small holding places to observe suspected patients and taking their samples for testing.

This, he said, was to prevent the unnecessary spread of the disease through transport and handling of suspected patients from one hospital to the other.

Dr Asare said periodic cleanup exercises were undertaken at the hospital as part of its infection prevention and control practices and that such exercises would continue unabated.

He said the exercise also formed part of the efforts of health practitioners to ensure zero epidemic outbreak in the Cape Coast Metropolis adding that “cholera is not a health problem, it is an environmental problem, so when we clean our environment, we control it”.

He said they remain resolute and committed to working with all relevant bodies and stakeholders to sustain all efforts aimed at ensuring clean environment.

Nana Prah Agyensaim, who is also the Paramount Chief of Assin Owirenkyi Traditional Area, underscored the benefits of a clean environment and called on the citizenry to give sanitation priority attention.