Mr George Amoasah, Senior Environmental and Compliance Officer of Global Communities, a non-governmental organization has expressed disappointment in La residents for failing to keep the area clean after a massive clean-up.
He said the time and money spent in the clean-up exercise in the La community about two week ago, with the aim of curbing the cholera spread, was not yielding the needed results because some of the people have not changed their attitudes of throwing refuse and human excreta back into the gutters.
Mr Amoasah expressed the displeasure at a health outreach programme organized by the HealthKeepers Network (HKN) at La in the Greater Accra Region on Wednesday.
It was sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and facilitated by Global Communities.
The programme was aimed at increasing access to household water treatment tablets and other health promoting products in response to the recent cholera outbreak in the La Dade-Kotopon Municipality.
Mr Amoasah urged the people to support health agencies by maintaining their environment clean to help kick cholera out of the community.
Mr Daniel E. Mensah, Executive Director of HealthKeepers Network said cholera is an attitudinal problem, and that, the people must be made to change from their negative approach to the environment.
He said because La Dade-Kotopon is the hardest hit municipality in the country, the HKN has commenced an integrated approach by embarking on a special campaign to promote and encourage the use of Aquatabs, a water purification tablet, apart from the use of oral rehydration solution (ORS) and zinc tablets.
Madam Patricia Awome, Community Health Nurse at the La General Hospital called on the people to be bold and report their neighbours who dump refuse into the gutters to the authorities.
Mr Kwasi Kumi and Edwin Aryee of HealthKeepers Network and Madam Winifred from Hope For Future Generation, an NGO, respectively taught the people how to dispense the ORS, Aquatabs and the right way to wash hands.
The audiences were each given a free strip of the Aquatabs.
Mr Kwasi Kumi asked the people to always keep ORS in their homes for emergency use and also convey suspected cholera cases immediately to the hospital.
The health volunteers of La community were briefed and asked to move from house-to-house to educate the people on cholera and other health preventive measures.
Some of the communities which had been hit hard by the recent outbreak in the Greater Accra region are La, Teshie, Nungua, Nima, Maamobi, Bukom, James Town, Mensah Guinea, Mamprobi, Chorkor, Glefe, Chemunaa, Mallam-Gbawe and Ashiaman.
The reported cases have so reached over 12,000 with over 100 deaths.
