Coronavirus: GMA warns it will lay down tools if govt fails to enforce restrictions

“If the government fails to adhere to our advice and things get out of hand, we will lay down our tools.” That is the caution of the GMA to the government in the wake of rising COVID-19 figures, and, calls for protocols on a lockdown to be reactivated.

General Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA), Dr. Justice Yankson, speaking on Citi TV’s weekend current affairs show, The Big Issue, monitored by GhanaWeb, said that it continues to reiterate its call on the government to place a ban on all public gatherings.

He said that with health facilities being inundated by cases and little or no spaces for new patients becoming a trend, the pressure is mounting on them as health practitioners to begin to push measures that would curb the rise of the cases in the country.

One of these, he added, is for the government to work with its advice, to restrict public activities in the country, as a measure to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

He stressed that while it should be easy for them to lay down their tools if their concerns are sidestepped, it will however not make sense especially during such a pandemic hence, their hope that the government does what is needed before it is too late.

“The issue is very simple, and we can only advise, and we can only advocate. The worst-case scenario is that we put our tools down but that might not be the solution for this pandemic because we don’t control the public purse, we don’t control the executive power. Mind you, there are first-line government advisors, and we do our best to interact with them collectively as a group, but the ultimate sanctioning of a particular activity has to come from the president.

“So inasmuch as we’ve made the case, the best we can do is to continue to advocate that these social gatherings are banned and if the powers do not really act in that direction, the worst case is that we will also put down our tools because we are also tired,” he said.

Recent figures from the Ghana Health Service show that Ghana has close to 4,000 active cases, with 390 deaths, leading to mounting pressures on health facilities in the country as room to accommodate new patients gets thinner.

In an earlier statement, the Africa Center for Disease Control (CDC) also confirmed Ghana one of the countries in Ghana where the new variant COVID-19 is spreading.