Hospitals on high alert amid cholera outbreak in Cape Coast

The Ministry of Health has directed all districts and regional hospitals across the country to be on high alert and set up isolation centres following the outbreak of cholera in Cape Coast in the Central Region.

A total of 157 cases have been reported in the region as of November 1 but no death has so far been recorded.

The ministry says it has deployed an emergency rapid response team to the Central Region to help control the situation, and also activated all cholera centres nationwide to address any possible major outbreak.

All hospitals in the Central Region have also been directed to link up with the various metropolitan, municipal and district assembles to activate the district cholera response teams.

Director of Public Health, Dr Badu Sarkodie told a news conference in Accra Wednesday “we are taking steps to, every suspected case, first do rapid diagnostic test and follow it up with stool culture to know exactly what we are handling. “All regions and districts have been put on high alerts,” he added, and asked hospitals across the country to prepare isolation centres for patients who may lose their lives as a result, the outbreak.

He assured that “oral rehydration therapy and other medication required; infusions, have been supplied to the affected region and district” Deputy Health Minister Dr Victor Bampoe assured of adequate funding to resource various health facilities to deal with any major outbreak.

“The learning that we did from 2014 in terms of setting up rapid response teams, in terms of getting the WASH interventions in place and all that have been activated so it wasn’t only concentrated in Greater Accra and that is why you can see that the response has been much quicker.

There have been no death and we hope that there will be no more death,” he said Meanwhile the Chief Executive Officer of the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital Dr Daniel Asare has allayed fears of a possible spread of the cholera bacterium in the region, noting public education has been intensified to prevent the spread of the disease to other parts of the region.