CHOLERA death toll rises in Accra

SEVENTEEN people are confirmed dead from the cholera outbreak which hit the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) early this month.
“As at yesterday, February 22, 2011, we had recorded 17 deaths resulting from 1,376 reported cases in the metroplis”, Dr Simpson Anim Boateng, Director of Public Health Department of the AMA, told the Daily Graphic in an interview.
“This is just what we are aware of”, he said adding that the  recorded figure may as well just be “10 per cent of the actual situation on the ground.”
Accordingly, Dr Boateng said the assembly had intensified public education on the disease and further called on the public to visit the nearest clinic if they realise any signs of the disease for a free treatment.
He said 13 out of the 17 persons who died were sent to the hospital already dead adding “early detection and treatment give you higher chances of survival”.
On the way forward, Dr Boateng said the assembly was using the Information Service Department’s vans to sensitise residence on the need for frequent and thorough washing of hands especially after visiting the toilet and before eating.
He said health officers in the various sub-metros within the AMA have equally been tasked to do a house to house inspection “to see if people are violating hygienic rules”.
Cholera, he said is a communicable disease that is mostly transmitted through food and water and was optimistic that the AMA would sensitise food vendors on the need for clean surroundings and habits as a way of tackling the outbreak.
“Our health workers are visiting all the hospitality premises  to see if their food is prepared in accordance with the AMA Public Health rules”, he added.
Food vendoring in the metropolis is a sprawling business for all kind of persons on any available space. Though the assembly’s public health rules requires vendors to be periodically screened as a way of weeding out persons with communicable disease, little success had been achieved.
But Dr Boateng says the assembly is now intensifying those measures as a wake up call to the cholera outbreak.
“Vendors who are found not to have screened themselves would be given short notice to do that and if they don’t, we would prosecute them”, he stated.
According to him, it was now illegal for people to sell on the streets and thus cautioned the public against patronising street-side foods.
He noted that the present rains in the metropolis was likely to complicate the sanitation situation in the assembly, a major source of the cholera and thus called on households to register with the assembly’s accredited waste contractors for a frequent lifting of waste.