Coronavirus: Concerted ECOWAS approach needed – Anlo MP

The Member of Parliament for the Anlo Constituency, Clement Kofi Homado, has called for an ECOWAS approach towards the fight against Covid-19 pandemic.

The MP in an interview with journalists on Friday, said, “It is time we move for a concerted effort beyond what we are doing at the various national levels in fighting this pandemic as a West African community.”

Mr. Homado noted that without any roadmap by ECOWAS in the fight against the pandemic, cross border issues within the region coupled with a poor health system would remain a threat to the efforts of individual countries.

“I think ECOWAS must meet or probably have a virtual conference to adopt a good roadmap towards this fight; other than that, cross border issues would continue to affect the efforts of individual governments,” he said.

“Ghana may be fighting the pandemic but if we don’t find a way to fight it as a community, we may end up importing more of it from our neighbours as a result of the porous nature of our borders,” he added.

The Anlo MP believes that the only way the virus could be contained is to have the West African community approaching the fight with a more coordinated effort under auspices of the Economic Community of West African.

He said, “the pandemic has exposed our poor health system and provides us a platform to pick up some lessons, thus the need I want to see ECOWAS leading this fight through some innovative means.”

The retiring MP also called on government to take steps to decentralize the health system by establishing regional laboratories across the country to ease the growing pressure on the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research in Accra.

Meanwhile, Mr. Homado on Wednesday 2 April, presented the Anloga district health directorate with some PPEs for onward distribution to health facilities in the district towards the fight against the pandemic.

The items he donated include 10 electronic thermometer hand guns, 100 piece of hand gloves 10 gallons of hand sanitizers, 50 pieces of N12 nose masks and 20 Veronica buckets and washing bowls.