Coronavirus Scare: Rural folks in Wa West refuse to visit health centers

Some sick rural folks from the Poyentanga in the Wa West District of the Upper West Region are refusing to visit their health centre to seek health care for fear of contracting the coronavirus disease.

Their reason for choosing to stay at home with their sickness rather than visit the health centre for health care, is that they heard the coronavirus disease was in the big villages, towns and cities, which discourages them from attending to the health facility.

Mr Yuorido Kakariba, a native of Tendoma community in the District told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview that they prefer to stay at home with a sickness they are familiar with than to go out and contract what he referred to as a strange disease.

“We have lived with a lot of sicknesses such as malaria and others but no one told us not to go out, but with this disease, they said we should not go out because if we go out, we are likely to contract it”, he said.

“If you get malaria there is medicine but for coronavirus, we heard there is no cure for it. So if you make mistake and contract it, you are in trouble that is why we don’t want to take chances”, he emphasized.

Madam Grace Bonye, also a native of Tendoma whose child was sick told the GNA that she did not send her child to the health centre because she was afraid of the risk of travelling in a public transport and also to public facilities such as the health centre.

‘We believe the disease is not in our village, we will only get it if we go to town so we choose to stay at home”, she said.

Mr Kareem Rashid Dalo, Physician Assistant In-charge of the Poyentanga Health Centre when contacted confirmed that the people were refusing to patronize the health centre because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said this was a worry to them because a lot of people were getting sick but were staying at home, which according to him was dangerous to their health.

He said, however, that they had initiated mobile outreach services to the communities to respond to the situation.

“We now send our health staff to the communities to attend to sick people in their homes since they are refusing to come to the facility by themselves”, he said.

Mr Dalo added that the outreach team was recording high number of attendance in the various communities than those who visit the facility itself daily.