Focus efforts on tackling poor sanitation

District Assemblies have been urged to focus efforts and resources on tackling poor sanitation in the communities to prevent cholera and other diseases.

Dr. Kwasi Yeboah-Awudzi, Kumasi Metropolitan Health Director, said they need to act decisively to end the practice of open defecation, bad waste management and laxity in the enforcement of environmental sanitation bye-laws.

Without these, he said, it would be difficult to stop the recurrence of cholera outbreak in the country.

Dr Yeboah-Awudzi was speaking a day’s sensitization workshop on the disease, organized jointly by the Metropolitan Health Directorate, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), at Oforikrom in Kumasi.

So far, there has been 11 confirmed cholera cases in the Metropolis with zero fatality.

Dr. Yeboah-Awudzi said it should not be business as usual, and that the people would have to change their way of doing things – radical attitudinal change.

He said issues about sanitation should be taken seriously, and must not be toyed with.

The workshop was meant to help the people to know everything they needed to know about cholera - how to avoid catching it, and what to do when infected.

Dr. Yeboah-Awudzi said it was disheartening that cholera, eradicated about 150 years ago in countries like the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK), continue to remain a major public health problem, claiming lives in Ghana and other developing nation.